
DROYSEN'S 
■PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY 



ANDREWS 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Shelf J&_^$ 

UNITEB STATES OF AMERICA. 



OUTLINE 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY 

(GRUNDRISS DER HISTORIK) 

- / 

JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN, 

LATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN. 



WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 



TRANSLATED BY 

E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, 

FKESIDBUT OF BROWN U>IVEKSITY. 




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BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY. 

1893. 



Copyright, 1893, 
By E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS. 



All Rights Reserved. 



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CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Translator's Preface v 

Author's Preface ix 

Author's Preface to the Third Edition xi 

Biographical Sketch of Droysen xiv 

Outline of the Principles of History 3 

Introduction : 

I. History 9 

II. The Historical Method 12 

III. The Problem of this " Outline " 16 

The Doctrine of Method 17 

I. Invention 18 

II. Criticism 21 

III. Interpretation 26 

The Doctrine of System 32 

I. The Work of History in Relation to its Kinds of 

Matter 35 

II. The Work of History in Relation to its Forms 36 

III. The Work of History- in Relation to the Workers .... 43 

IV. The Work of History in Relation to its Ends 46 

The Doctrine of Systematic Presentation 49 

Appendix I. The Elevation of History to the Rank of 

a Science 61 

Appendix II. Nature and History 90 

Appendix III. Art and Method 105 

Index 121 

iii 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



I became interested in Professor Droysen as an his- 
torian so early as 1882. In real grasp upon the nature 
and meaning of history he seemed to me the superior 
of Ranke. This view I have not changed. To assist 
myself in comprehending his very deep thoughts I soon 
began a translation of the Historik. At first I had no 
idea of publishing, but as the value of the little work 
impressed me more and more deeply, I at last deter- 
mined to English it for others. I subsequently laid the 
matter before Droysen, receiving his approval in the 
genial letter which appears upon a preceding page. 
I expected to finish the work in a few months from 
the date of this letter, but more pressing labors came 
and became permanent, so commanding my time that 
I have never since been able to devote to the transla- 
tion more than now and then an hour. At last, how- 
ever, after so many years, it is completed, and I give 
it to the public, appendices and all. These greatly 
elucidate the " Outline " proper, and ma}' very appro- 
priately be read first. Those who know Droysen's cum- 
brous yet nervous and abbreviated style of writing will 
not estimate the extent of my toil by the number of 
pages in this book. 

Such was my reverence for Droysen that, after his 
death in 1884, I cherished the hope of preparing a 



yi TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

brief biography of him. I relinquished this half-formed 
purpose partly for lack of time, and partly because 
several excellent sketches of him presently appeared. 
Max Duncker himself wrote two of these, one in Ivan 
Midler's Biographical Year-Book for the Knowledge 
of Antiquity, also published separately, and a more 
extended one in the Prussian Year-Book for August, 
1884 (LIV, Heft 2), edited by von Treitschke and Del- 
briick. Duncker was Droysen's close friend, and had 
access to much helpful material in manuscript. I in- 
clined to translate one of his pieces for use in this 
volume, but upon reflection thought the biography of 
Dr. Hermann Kriiger likely to be more interesting to 
American readers. Professor G. Droysen, son of the 
author of the "Outline," considers Kriiger's account 
on the whole better than aught else which was written 
upon his father's life and work. This biography first 
came out in the form of articles in the Mecklenburg 
Anzeiger, the last one appearing on Saturday, August 2, 
1884. Kriiger, too, was an intimate friend of Droy- 
sen's. I could not have hoped to write anything better 
than what these two competent and privileged biogra- 
phers had presented. Besides, it was intimated to me 
that Professor G. Droysen would sometime publish a 
still ampler history of his distinguished father's life. 

It is a reflection upon our times that such a man 
as Droysen should so soon even seem to be forgotten. 
I say this notwithstanding certain reasons for apathy 
toward him grounded in the nature and habits of the 
man. Owing to his intense application, and also to his 
simple honesty, forbidding in him those arts by which 
some German professors are popular, Droysen founded, 



translator's preface. vii 

properly speaking, no school, though several of the 
German historians who earned fame during his last 
years and after his death were his pupils, inspired by 
his spirit and impressing upon their works the stamp of 
his manner. Among these may be mentioned Griin- 
hagen, of Breslau, who has written so well on the first 
two Silesian Wars ; Reinhold Koser, of Berlin, who has 
edited several volumes of the Political Correspondence 
of Frederick the Great ; and S. Isaacsohn, author of the 
excellent Geschichte des preussischen Beamtenthums. Of 
these Koser is perhaps the ablest, though Griinhagen is 
famous for his fairness. In this he excels Droysen, who 
was often too controversial and always too favorable 
to Prussia. But not one of these younger historians 4 
so much as approaches the master in that wonderful 
wealth and control of materials exhibited by him in his s 
Greschichte der preussischen Politik. 

The " Outline " as it appears in English is in certain 
points somewhat more than a reflex of the original. 
In those paragraphs of Droysen's, and they are not 
few, which he so painfully abbreviated, leaving them 
hardly more than strings of catch-words for lecture-room 
amplification, the statements have been carefully pieced 
out into a fullness that will, it is hoped, give them clear 
meaning. For the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian 
with which the author loved to interlard his discourse, 
English has in most cases been substituted, the origi- 
nal being given either in brackets or in the margin. A 
few brief explanatory notes have been added at points 
where they seem most necessary. 

I consider Droysen's Historik the weightiest book of 
its size composed in our century, weightier than any 



Vlll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 

other, small or great, save certain treatises by Hegel. 
Yet I know the present tendency of historical study 
too well to expect that all the English and American 
historical scholars will read this book who, in my judg- 
ment, would greatly profit by reading it. In most 
directions one finds a stronger zeal for the knowledge 
of history than for the understanding of history. We 
are so busy at gathering facts that no time is left us 
to reflect upon their deeper meanings. Too many 
who wish to be considered historians seem hardly less 
enthusiastic over the history of some town pump, pro- 
vided it is "fresh" and "written from the sources," 
than over that of the rise of a constitution. Happily 
this fault is less pronounced than it was. With increas- 
ing clearness is it seen that history is rationally inter- 
esting only as man's life is interesting, and that, touching 
man's life, the element in which one may most legiti- 
mately feel deep interest is its moral evolution. This 
is emphatically Droysen's view, and in the " Outline " 
he sets it forth in a more inspiring and convincing 
manner than is done by any other writer whom it has 
been my privilege to read. May this translation enable 
many to derive from his profound conceptions even 
more profit than they have brought me. 

E. BENJ. ANDREWS. 
Brown University, 
September 6, 1892. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



Lectures upon the Encyclopedia and Methodology 
of History which I delivered from time to time, begin- 
ning with 1857, led me to write out the skeleton of 
the same in order to give my auditors a basis for my 
oral amplification. In this way, as manuscript, first in 
1858 and then again in 1862, the following "Outline" 
was printed. Numerous requests, some of them from 
foreign lands, determined me, when the little volume 
had to be printed anew, to give it to the public. Hin- 
drances and scruples of many kinds have delayed the 
publication until now, when at last, according to my 
provisional judgment at any rate, the work is ripe. 

To the first impression, in order to give a general 
idea of the questions discussed in the body of the 
work, I had prefixed an introduction. This still stands 
at the beginning. A couple of articles are appended 
to the treatise, .which will, I trust, serve to illustrate 
certain points touched therein. The first, entitled 
"The Elevation of History to the Rank of a Science," 
was occasioned by the appearance of Buckle's well- 
known work, and printed in von Sybel's " Zeitschrift" 
for 1852. The second, on "Nature and History," was 
evoked by a discussion in which all the advantages of 
the metaphysical point of view were on my opponent's 
side. In the third article, under the title of "Art and 
Method," I have collected what is hardly more than a 



X AUTHOR S PREFACE. 

succession of aphoristic remarks, intended to bring to 
memory the partly forgotten limits between dilletantism 
and science. Some of them have already found place 
in an academic lecture. See the Monatsberichte of the 
Royal Academy of Sciences, July 4th, 1867. I hesi- 
tated whether or not to add a fourth discussion, some 
copies of which I had printed as an introduction to the 
second part of my "History of Hellenism" in 1843. 
I wished on the basis of this to investigate with scienti- 
fic friends precisely this problem of the principles of 
history, a problem from which the point of view be- 
tween theology and philology held by me in the 
History of Hellenism and branches of learning related 
thereto, seemed to me to derive justification. This 
discussion I have preferred to postpone, because it ap- 
peared unlikely that readers would be as much inter- 
ested as myself in knowing the point whence I set out 
and the roads I traveled to reach the conclusions 
presented in the following pages. The purpose of 
this publication will be attained if it serves to incite 
further inquiry into the questions which it treats, 
touching the nature and task of History, its method 
and its competency. 

Berlin, November, 1867. 



PREFACE TO THE THIEI) EDITION. 



In this new impression of the " Outline " the arrange- 
ment has been in some points altered, into a form which 
repeated delivery of the lectures indicated as better 
answering my purpose. In the somewhat numerous 
paragraphs which have double figures, 1 those in brackets 
refer to the order in the editions of 1867 and 1875. 

The " Outline " itself makes it clear that it does not 

pretend to be a "Philosophy of History," and also why 

it does not look for the essence of History in that 

which has opened so splendid a career to natural 

science. 

JOH. GUST. DROYSEN. 
Berlin, July 18, 1881. 

1 Not reproduced in this translation. — Tr. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 
By Dr. Hermann Kruger. 

On the morning of June 19, 1884, in the Villa at 
Schoneberg, near Berlin, whither he had removed upon 
medical advice, died Johami Gustav Droysen, in whom 
Germany lost one of its best men and one of its greatest 
historians. To the author of these lines, a grateful 
pupil of his, it is no less a necessity of the heart than 
a duty of piety to lay a crown of honor upon this man's 
grave. 

Let us begin by briefly sketching the outward course 
of Droysen's life. 

Born on the 6th of July, 1808, at Treptow, on the 
Rega, as son of a minister, and early left an orphan, 
he obtained his preparation for the university at the 
Mariemtift- Gymnasium in Stettin. He then studied 
philology in Berlin, and obtained there his first position 
as teacher, in the Gymnasium of the Gray Cloister. In 
1833, having already published some studies in the 
domain of Greek history, he habilitated as privat-docent 
at the Berlin University, where he delivered philological 
and historical lectures with great acceptance, and also 
advanced very soon to the position of professor extra- 
ordinary. In 1840 he accepted a call to become 
ordinary (full) professor of history in the University of 
Kiel, where he worked with great success till 1851. At 
the same time he took an influential part as a politician 



xvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

in the agitations to which (lining the forties the popular 
tion of Schleswig-Holstein had recourse in view of 
Denmark's threat to take possession of these duchies by 
force. In 1848 Droysen was sent from Kiel by the 
provisional government of the duchies as their repre- 
sentative to the Diet of the Confederation, and later 
as deputy to the German National Assembly. 

In the year 1851 Droysen was called to the University 
of Jena, to which he belonged as one of its first 
ornaments through the eight following years. From 
there he accepted in 1859 a call to the University of 
Berlin, where he had begun his academic career, and 
where from this time on for another quarter century 
he wrought Avith a success which was great and which 
continued to the last. His lectures were among the 
most frequented at the university. Particularly those 
upon modern history drew together in his auditorium, 
besides numerous students, also many high civil and 
military officers and many savans. For Droysen was 
not merely an eminent savant and historical investigator, 
but also an extraordinary teacher. 

As savant and historian he published, from every one 
of the universities to which he successively belonged, 
one or more works which have exalted his name as 
among the most brilliant in the scientific world. 

To his first Berlin period belongs the translation of 
iEschylus that appeared in 1832, which Droysen, — 
as a young philologist, also its an enthusiast for 
the most powerful among the Greek dramatists, — 
undertook at first in the interest of a friend not 
adequately acquainted with the Greek, and only subse- 
quently gave to the press. His appreciation of the 



JOHANK GUSTAV DROYSEN. Wll 

Greek nature, his poetic endowment, and his unusual 
mastery of the speech, begot by their union a translation 
which stands forth masterful in its kind and has not 
been surpassed even to this day. To be sure, the 
philologists of ' strict observance ' most violently attacked 
this free poetic imitation, which is true rather to the 
spirit and thoughts of the writer than to the letter. 
But Droysen was not drawn astra}-. Convinced that 
he who will bring a Greek poet like ^Eschylus or 
Aristophanes pleasurably to the understanding of a 
German reader must utterly renounce the literal mode 
of rendering, he immediately followed with his trans- 
lation of Aristophanes. This, like that of iEschylus, 
speedily found the favor of the public and has kept 
it even to our own days. 

Both translations, on which Droysen, as is proved by 
the rendering of certain verses and the change of 
various expressions, has been working right along, exist 
now in third editions. What power they have to afford 
high satisfaction and delight even to the most rigid 
philologists, the writer of these lines learned when, 
during his time in Leipzig, he listened to the exposition 
of the Knights of Aristophanes by Ritschl, and more 
than once heard that eminent critic express his 
admiring approval of Droysen's version. 

Meantime there unfolded itself in Droysen, side by 
side with his philological genius, still more emphatically 
the talent and the inclination for historical investigation 
and exposition; and having once pressed his way into 
the sphere of Hellenic things, he saw in the thorough 
investigation of Grecian antiquity the principal task of 
his scientific calling. A fruit of these Hellenic studies 



will BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

was the History of Hellenism, begun in Berlin, finished 
later in Kiel, to which work of several volumes the 
History of Alexander the Great serves in a way as 
introduction. ' It is,' says the author in his preface, 
' a highly significant yet almost forgotten development 
of political and national relations which we have 
endeavored to fathom and expound/ The result was 
a satisfactory presentation of an epoch till then little 
known, yet highly important, — wherein, amid the 
violent and often confused struggles of Alexander's 
generals and successors, those diadochi and epigoni, the 
Greek spirit was brought into connection with the 
Oriental nature, so as, by a process of fermentation, de- 
composition, and illumination, to cause a mighty trans- 
formation in the thinking and feeling of the ancient 
world, by which, withal, the path was leveled for 
Christianity. Droysen apprehends his problem from 
elevated points of view and solves it, bringing clearness 
into the tangled chaos of overpowering material, with 
undeniably great dexterity. Leo, in his Universal 
History, names this work ' an excellent treatment of the 
subject.' Upon this, too, however, sharp attacks were 
not wanting, and they were partly well founded. For 
Droysen, still at that time a thorough Hegelian, had in 
his handling of the epoch allowed quite too much play 
to the Hegelian method of constructing history, thus 
thrusting much, particularly respecting Alexander and 
his plans, into incorrect perspective and false lights. 
Subsequently he saw this himself, and in the preface to 
the second edition of this work, with the perfect honor 
peculiar to his character, he confessed his error. 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. xix 

Here in Kiel, where Droysen completed his remark- 
able work, the History of Hellenism, he completed also 
his transition from ancient to modern history. In 184(3 
he published his lectures on the History of the Wars 
for Freedom. In an ingenious manner, with an almost 
perfect art of luminous construction and rich coloring 
in his presentation, such as he equaled nowhere else in 
his works, that period so excessively abounding in 
struggles, transformations, developments, and results, is 
unfolded and depicted in speech that is fresh, resonant, 
often out and out ravishing. Whoever wishes a per- 
fectly clear consciousness of the difference between 
the born and schooled historian and the dilettante, should 
compare this History of the Wars for Freedom, which for 
a long time has not in our judgment been sufficiently 
appreciated, with Beitske's much lauded work upon 
the same period. Although in many parts left behind 
by more recent investigations, this work of Droysen's 
still presents such a fullness of spirited remarks and 
incisive historical observations, that the perusal of it 
even affords genuine enjoyment. 

A second work which Droysen beg^rn at Kiel but 
finished later in Jena, was the famous Biography of 
Field Marshal York of Wartenburg, at present in its 
ninth edition. To say anything at so late a day in 
praise of this book, which in its classic completeness 
stands forth simply unique in biographical literature, 
would be carrying owls to Athens. We will only 
remark that although the occasion for the composition 
of the book was an outward one, Droysen nevertheless 
seized upon it with joy, in the conviction that in that 
lax period of peace nothing was better adapted to 



XX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

strengthen the people's patriotic and moral conscious- 
ness than the example of a great personality like York, 
energetic, yet ruled by the most rigid sense of duty. 
The portrayal of this hero's character was especially 
intended to be an example to strengthen in the simple 
service of duty the young Prussian army, exposed in 
its long and often tedious garrison life to the danger of 
laxity. 

It was in the time of deep political excitement 
and exhaustion which naturally followed the stirring 
period of the later forties, when Droysen began his 
labors at Jena. A condition of almost entire discourage- 
ment had come in as to the vigorous reconstruction of 
Germany. The national dreams, wishes and strivings 
lay upon the ground like a sea of blossoms. Droysen 
understood this general despair but did not share it. It 
was his irrefragable conviction that although this first 
attempt to erect the German Empire again had failed, 
it would be followed by others, and that at last, pro- 
vided Prussia would only, in proper recognition of her 
historical calling, brace herself up to an energetic policy, 
the loosely connected German states would unite under 
her lead into a firm whole, and thus realize after all the 
perpetual dream of a new German Empire. 

Borne on by this firm hope and conviction, Droysen 
began his colossal work, the History of Prussian Policy, 
the first volume appearing in 1855. In this path-break- 
ing work, which furnishes evidence no less of the 
author's unwearied lust for toil than of his prodigious 
power for toil, Droysen introduces us into the history 
of the origin of the Prussian state, and shows how this 
state, amid perpetual struggles with inner and outer 



JOHANN GUSTAV DKOYSEN. XXI 

difficulties, with labor most intense and efforts often in 
vain, in ever new, energetic onsets, toiled its way up, 
furthered and utilized all the powers necessary for the 
subsistence and prosperity of the modern state, so as at 
last to enter, a German state with full credentials, into 
the rank of Europe's great powers. A prodigious plen- 
itude of material from the archives was for the first time 
wrought into form and published in this work. In con- 
sequence, many views previously accepted as certain 
have been given up, some facts placed in new lights, 
and much else brought to the day as absolutely new. 

However, this epoch-making work, which we peruse 
now in thirteen thick volumes, will hardly prove 
popular in the sense in which Mommsen's Roman 
History, for instance, or Ranke's History of the Refor- 
mation, has become so. Such a result is prevented not 
only by the great compass of the treatise but more than 
all by the circumstance that it does not present a history 
of the Prussian state, embracing and unfolding in richly 
colored view the entire breadth and manifoldness of 
the state's life, but simply, as the title says, a history 
of Prussia's 'policy,' to follow out which in its pro 
gressive realization of exalted ideals is for one not an 
historian often wearying. 

We may regret that Droysen did not choose to write 
a comprehensive history of the Prussian state ; we 
may blame him for falling, in this work, too, here and 
there, though less frequently than before, into the 
Hegelian habit of historical construction ; yet the 
History of Prussian Policy remains forever a standard 
treatise, path-breaking, foundation-laying, epoch-mak- 
ing. No subsequent historian having to explore the 



XX11 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

same domain, will be permitted with impunity to slight 
Droysen's labors. That the author was awarded for it 
by the scientific commission appointed to make the 
award, the great prize of a thousand Thalers founded 
by Frederick William IV, to be given every five years 
for the best historical work appearing during the same, 
was only the proper recognition of the astonishing 
industry, great critical acumen and scientific thorough- 
ness characterizing the elaboration of this work ; a 
work which insures Droysen for all time the glory of 
being reckoned among Germany's most remarkable 
historians. It ends, at present, with the account of 
the first two Silesian wars. On the basis of private 
information which has come to me to the effect that 
the remainder was found in his desk ready for the 
press, quietly and peacefully closed, as what he wished 
to give to the public, we may cherish the hope that a 
fourteenth volume will follow, bringing us to the begin- 
ning of the Seven Years' War. 1 

Droysen has been not only an historical investigator 
especially favored of heaven, but also a preeminently 
remarkable teacher of history. He brought great 
inborn talent to the teacher's calling ; yet this would 
perhaps not have attained so full activity had he not 
learned before his entrance upon his academic career, 
namely as teacher at the Gray Cloister, to exercise and 
develop this talent practically in minor relations. 
This first period of teaching was a decided advantage 
to him in his entire later activity as university in- 
structor. 

1 This has since been published, and reaches to the opening of the 
Seven Years' War. — TV. 



JOHANN GUSTAV DEOYSEN. XX111 

Masterly was Droysen's knack of grouping his his- 
torical material in his lectures so as to render it visible 
clearly and visible all together, and of maintaining the 
essentials thereof in harmonious relation with minor 
historical details. The matter did not press itself 
upon the attention in a too massive manner, nor on the 
other hand was it swamped 1)}- historical observations. 
In his portrayal of given epochs, in his characterization 
of towering personalities, in his definite grasp of lead- 
ing points of view, he possessed the art of a great 
master. Yet to go further and portray historical per- 
sonalities in their outward manifestation, as Ranke 
loves to do and does in such a brilliant manner, Droysen 
invariably refused. w Whether any one has yellow hair 
and blue eyes,' he once said derisively, 'is a question 
on which nothing depends ; in devoting attention to 
that sort of thing an historian descends to miniature 
painting.' It would cerf!ainly have been welcome to 
many of his hearers and readers if he had not so 
completely renounced this means of concrete represen- 
tation. 

Droysen held you spell-bound in his lectures, which 
moved upon the middle line between free utterance 
and literal delivery from manuscript. He did this by 
his splendid diction, by his sharp and ingenious exposi- 
tion, by his extraordinary art of letting, at the right time 
and place and often only by a brief, hint-like remark, a 
surprising blaze of light flash upon special personali- 
ties. Great also was the effect of the powerful, manly 
spirit which got expression in all these ways. 

Hence Droysen's lectures could not but convoke 
a great company of listeners. They did this even to 



XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

his last days, although other and younger lights with 
equally great power of attraction later arose at his side 
as colleagues. To hear Droysen was, as one often heard 
said, a delight, and for the sake of this delight many of 
his hearers neglected taking notes. Yet any one who, 
like the undersigned, in spite of the great temptation 
merely to listen, consistently practiced taking notes, 
knows how durable and precious a treasure he possesses 
in a Heft written down from Droysen's deliverances. 

But what so permanently chained his pupils and 
made them hearken to their teacher's words, almost as 
if in worship, and what drew them always again 
straight to his lectures, was at bottom, if I see rightly, 
Droysen's peculiar, mighty personality, which, with its 
powerful tendency to the ideal, had its roots deep in the 
moral. Such a personality ever exercises upon academic 
youth, so susceptible to the ideal, an irresistible magical 
effect, not to be undervalued. For the best that a 
teacher who is, besides, an ethical personality, can give 
to his pupils, is and remains in the last analysis, 
himself. This is as true in a certain sense of the 
university teacher as of any. Droysen was a personality 
full of high moral earnestness, and he always energet- 
ically asserted even in his lectures the point of view 
of the moral judgment. ' The moral,' so he expressed 
himself on one occasion, ' is that which constitutes every 
man's final worth, that is, his only worth.' How much 
sympathy he has therefore (compare the first volume of 
the History of Prussian Policy) with Henry VII, of 
Luxemburg, and how little for the talented Talleyrand 
in his utter frivolousness ! Not rich talent, or preeminent 
genius with its egoistic tendency, but unselfish sur- 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. XXV 

render to the idea of the good, he viewed as alone 
worthy of respect and admiration. 'What,' he once 
asked, ' is the truly great in history ? It is controlled, 
ennobled, glorified passion'; but yet, so it reads further 
in his Principles of History, 'everything historically 
great is only a sun-mist in the manifestation of God.' 

Not in the sphere of the Greek world — as people 
have supposed, and as Hans Prutz has again recently 
asserted and emphasized in the National-Zeitung — not 
in the sphere of the Greek world did Droysen's moral 
view of the universe have its roots, but in the soil of 
Christianity. In his thought the development of 
humanity — whose preparatory stages he characterizes as 
recognition of self and recognition of the world (see his 
Principles of History) — completes itself in the recogni- 
tion of God. History itself is to him ' not the light and 
the truth but only a witness and a conservation of them, 
a sermon upon them; as John was not himself the Light 
but sent to bear witness of the Light.' The warmth 
and luminousness of this deep moral view streamed out 
through his lectures, although it was not Droysen's 
manner to repeat or to express it in definitely formu- 
lated utterances or propositions. 

During his exuberant activity Droysen delivered over 
two hundred courses of lectures, before assemblies 
always numerous, of academic youth. They embraced 
as well ancient as modern and the most recent history. 
Besides, he lectured over and over again upon the 
Encyclopedia and Methodology of History. This 
course presented an infinite abundance of instructive 
and inspiring matter, and, in the opinion of the under- 
signed, was for the prospective historian simply 



XXVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

indispensable. Perhaps not too strong was the recent 
assertion that it is doubtful whether a course like that 
of Droysen's on the Encyclopedia of History will ever 
be delivered again by any university teacher. 

Many placed his course of lectures on Greek history 
at the head. This certainly combined Droysen's compre- 
hensive knowledge of the ancient world with his deep 
understanding of Greek affairs, his sympathetically 
reproductive sense for Greek thinking and action, and 
for the changing forms of Greek political life and 
of Greek national art, in such wise as to render it a 
highly interesting and instructive course. What 
Droysen presented was not mere dry information, that 
pains had hunted up and collected; but, supported 
by the thorough and many-sided knowledge that he had 
won by long years of study, he reconstructed from the 
fullness of his living vision the Greek world in its 
political and social development, in its aspects of light 
and shade, in its rise and its decadence. 

Years after, there came back to me a vivid recollection 
of those lectures. I was temporarily residing in Berlin 
and was taking a walk with Droysen in the Thiergarten 
one fine August evening. It was, if I mistake not, 
in the summer of 1877. Our conversation led to the 
contests of the diadochi, and from these back to 
Alexander and Demosthenes. Knowing Droysen's derog- 
atory judgment of the statesman Demosthenes, I found 
it easy by an utterance of a contrary tenor to evoke his 
contradiction and to lead him on to a fundamental 
justification of his view. In speech that was all life and 
motion Droysen now not only unfolded in the most 
various directions an astonishing abundance of ready 



.roll ANN GUSTAV DEOYSEN. xxvii 

information, but swept forwards and backwards, with so 
deep a grasp of Greek relations, that a wish more lively 
than ever came over my soul : Oh that this man had 
chosen to think out a Greek history for us ! Oh that 
he in preference to so many others had been called 
to fill up this painful gap so long felt ! 

Still larger than Droysen's classes in ancient history 
were those which heard him upon modern and the 
most recent periods. The lectures upon the latter were 
of even more universal interest than the others. In 
them he took his hearers from about the middle of the 
fifteenth century on to the fifties of the present cen- 
tury, setting down and maintaining as landmarks to 
his separate but continuous lectures the Thirty Years' 
War, the Seven Years' War, the Wars for Freedom, 
and the Revolutionary time of 1848 with its proxi- 
mate results. These lectures bore, like the others, a 
thoroughly spirited, inspiring and at the same time 
strongly scientific character ; but they had an incom- 
parably greater practical effect upon the immediate 
present, many securing through the deeper understand- 
ing which these lectures afforded of German history, 
a better insight into the present and its tasks, so that 
the power of the political shibboleth, which especially 
in the first half of the sixties dominated so much the 
musings and aspirations of our youth, was more and 
more broken. 

It is equally true that Droysen extremely seldom 
allowed himself, near as the temptation often lay, an 
allusion to present political revolutions, and when he 
did indulge it was done in a brief and definite word. 
Thus, once, in the winter of 1864, when the constitu- 



XXVlii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

tional conflict was at its height, he closed a lecture with 
these words : ' It was the curse of this party that it, 
precisely like our party of progress to-day, ended by 
placing party-interest above interest in the Fatherland.' 
In consequence of this concluding utterance, his entire 
academic audience, which was then in great part feeling 
the touch of progressist breath, became excited. The 
students determined, against the next evening, should 
Droysen in his customary brief recapitulation again be 
guilty of a remark so deeply injurious to progressist 
feelings, to raise the cry of ' scandal ' and to make an 
infernal racket. Apprised of this plot, Droysen came 
on the following evening into the large auditorium, 
this time full even to suffocation, ascended the platform 
with easy step, and, glancing over the assembly with a 
firm look out of his large dark eyes, began : ' We con- 
cluded yesterday evening, gentlemen, with the words ' : 
and then followed exactly the final words of the pre- 
ceding lecture. All was silent ; not a person stirred. 
Every one had the feeling that he who stood upon that 
platform was a man. 

As in his lectures, Droysen's special talent for teach- 
ing showed itself also in the historical society con- 
ducted by him, whose members assembled around him 
every Saturday in his study. The reading of the paper 
that had been prepared on the assigned theme was 
followed by a debate, Droysen leading, in which he, in 
a fashion open and free yet of extreme forbearance, 
criticised what had been presented, and thereby set 
forth the method of historical investigation in a manner 
at once thorough and inspiring. His efforts progress- 
ively to form his pupils to scientific, independent 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. xxix 

investigations and undertaking's, had great and endur- 
ing support in his ability quietly and surely to find 
his way into every one's individuality. 

During the time of conflict in the sixties, when, 
among others, his colleague, Herr von Sybel, fought 
boldly in the ranks of the then party of progress against 
Bismarck and the Prussian government, Droysen de- 
clined participation by speech or writing, and only occa- 
sionally indicated his position, which was not that of the 
opposition. Subsequently, too, when those great events 
and transformations leading to the erection of the 
national state were taking place, he greeted them 
rather with silent joy than with loud acclaim, and, in 
general, the older he grew, he held himself more and 
more aloof from the political contests of the day, in 
order by silence and solitude to live more entirely in 
his scientific labors. 

Yet Droysen, too, had his time in which duty and 
conscience seemed to command him to come forward 
publicly with a manly word. It was during his period 
of labor at Kiel. The decrees of the provisional 
estates-assembly held at Roeskild in the year 1844, 
threatened the rights of the duchies, Schleswig and 
Holstein, and would have been dangerous had the 
Danish crown followed them. These acts called 
Droysen into the political arena. He composed what 
has become celebrated as the k Kiel Address,' which met 
with a storm of approval and was instantly covered 
with thousands of subscriptions. As in this writing, 
so subsequently, in a second, namely when Frederick 
VII announced the consolidated-constitution of Den- 
mark, Droysen came out with noble manliness, and 



XXX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

glowing through and through with patriotic wrath, in 
opposition to Danish arrogance. 'What business,' a 
passage of it reads, 'has Denmark with us? What we 
with Denmark ? We have no mind for any price what- 
ever to be guilty of treason to ourselves and to Ger- 
many.' ' Heed,' he further warns the Danes, ' heed the 
evolving time. Disdain ye what we have spoken, fill 
ye the king's ear with adverse counsel and your heart 
with the unrighteous plunder ; 1 then see to it what 
sort of advice ye are giving yourselves ! We are the 
wards of a great people, a great Fatherland.' 

Droysen's intervention in this patriotic way for the 
cause of the duchies in those evil days, his accurate 
knowledge of the relations in question, and his sharp 
political vision, specially qualified him to represent the 
cause of the duchies elsewhere as well. He was there- 
fore sent by the provisional government subsequently 
established, as its confidential agent to the Diet of the 
Germanic Confederation at Frankfort. When, then, in 
consequence of that movement which shook Germany 
in the spring of 1848, the National Assembly convened 
at Frankfort, Droysen was chosen to this also. He 
joined the so-called hereditary-imperial party, and, as 
member of the committee on the constitution, drew up 
its protocol. Afterwards, when men's hope-filled 
dreams of a new, united Germany had melted like 
snow, Droysen, with Dahlmann, E. M. Arndt and 
others, in May 1849, left the National Assembly. 

'Pale as a corpse,' so Droysen once told the story in 
after years, ' Dahlmann entered the hall in order to set 
his name to the notification of departure. All eyes 

1 ' Gdleht.'' 



,M)HANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. XXXI 

were upon him. Deeply moved and scarcely master of 
himself, he seized the pen and subscribed. What he 
suffered was for him notification of the death of all 
his patriotic hopes.' Droysen was less destitute of 
courage, though he, too, was bowed to the very earth. 
Even in those most evil days he could not and would 
not let go the hope of a renewal of the German Empire. 
Henceforth, as before, he placed his entire reliance on 
Prussia, whose calling to advance to the pinnacle of 
a newly united Fatherland he viewed as irrefutably 
demonstrated by her history. 

As an historian he conceived to be equally certain his 
duty to stamp this historical calling of Prussia fast and 
deep upon the soul of the despairing race of his days — 
a promise, as it were, of a better future. He accord- 
ingly began that work of his, planned in the broadest 
style, the History of Prussian Policy. In this he now 
espied the principal task of his life, and to it he hence- 
forth consecrated his entire strength. 

After his service at Frankfort Droysen never again 
came forward as member of a political body. It was, 
we have already remarked, not without hope in his 
heart that he bade farewell to Frankfort. He had looked 
upon the business of the first German parliament as 
simply a first, though unsuccessful effort, to be followed 
by others with happier result; and in the album pro- 
vided for its members — characteristically enough of 
his then view of things — he wrote, slightly altering the 
Vergilian verse : Tantae molis erat Grermanam eondere 
gentem! But he would not again accept a commission 
to public political activity, and he declined with 
emphasis an election to the parliament at Erfurt. 'Any 



XXXU BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

one who has made such a fiasco as we did at Frankfort,' he 
expressed himself on a later occasion in his open, honest 
way, ' ought to give these things once for all a wide 
berth and relegate them to other and more artful hands.' 

However, in his scientific labors and in pushing for- 
ward his masterpiece, he continually nourished his own 
hope and that of his nation. And when the mighty events 
of the year 1866 announced the break of a new day, 
and in the autumn of that year the author of these 
lines again visited him at his home, almost his first 
words, spoken with joyful confidence, were, 'Now the 
movement will go through and what we have been so 
long striving for will succeed.' A few years more and 
he saw his prediction, boldly spoken in a time of 
discouragement, that the Hohenzollern would sometime 
take the place of the Hohenstauffen, fulfilled to the 
letter. The splendor of the Empire, fresh from its 
resurrection, glorified the evening of his declining life. 

Droysen's nature had the build of genius. His ability 
was many-sided. To a sharp, deeply penetrating intel- 
lect he joined a lively, mobile imagination, along with a 
fine feeling for form and a decided sense for the realities 
of life and for their worth. His poetic sensibility, 
which qualified* him beyond many others for the 
translation of an Aeschylus and an Aristophanes, did not 
hinder him from becoming and remaining, as a pupil of 
Boeckh's, likewise a philologist in the best sense of the 
word. Full as he was of ideal elevation, it was not in 
the circle of thoughts prevalent in the Hellenic world, 
whose deep shadows he recognized beyond almost every 
other historian, but in the real sphere of Christianity, 
that he found full and enduring satisfaction for the 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. XXX111 

moral need of his nature. Once an enthusiastic pupil 
of Hegel, he later became a thorough connoisseur and 
admirer of Aristotle. Indeed, a decided inclination to 
philosophic thinking formed a strongly prominent feature 
of his character. To the end of his days Droysen 
applied himself to philosophical studies with a persist- 
ence and a thoroughness hard to be matched by any 
modern historian, although the results of this are not 
immediately manifest in his writings, unless we take 
into account his tendency, which increased with his 
years, toward abstract expressions. 

Amid this abundance of richest endowment Droy- 
sen did not dissipate his power, but with the un- 
usual energy characteristic of him, was able to limit 
himself to the realm for which it was manifest he was 
peculiarly adapted, that of history. A master in investi- 
gating details, as is shown by his minor but thoroughly 
classical treatises upon Pufendorf, Eberhard Windeck, 
the Marchioness of Bayreuth, the Strahlendorf Opinion, 
and others, he was at the same time an historical 
investigator on a larger scale, who never in viewing the 
particular lost from his eye its connection with the 
great whole. His innate drawing to Universal History 
led him to cultivate departments farthest removed from 
one another, the world of antiquity llo less than that of 
the closing Middle Age and modern times. Yet these 
different periods appeared to him not as disconnected 
fragments, but as an historic totality organically united. 
This susceptibility of his for universal history, as well 
as the sharpness and thoroughness with which he 
investigated, and equally with these the great variety 
of his scientific works, assure to Droysen for all time 



XX Xiv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

his place among the Coryphcei of German historians, 
putting him among moderns in immediate connection 
with Ranke. And he is, indeed, so far as I have 
observed, as yet the only historian whom any one, as 
Professor Manrenbrecher essayed to do in discussion 
some years ago — has ventured to compare with Ranke. 
The relation between these two great historians, who 
for years worked side by side at the same university, 
was unfortunately not the best. The causes of this 
may here so much the better be left unexplained, in 
that the undersigned, to tell the truth, is unable clearly 
to assign the ultimate reason for the phenomenon. 
Meanwhile let us all the more rejoice — remembering 
a word from Goethe — in the fact that we can call two 
such men with their mighty creations forever 'our own.' 
The aged Ranke still l works away with the strength 
of youth upon his Universal History, for whose com- 
pletion all adherents and admirers of this great his- 
torian heartily wish him undiminished mental as well 
as bodily freshness. Droysen, some thirteen years 
younger, to the great pain of his numerous pupils 
and reverers, is much earlier than many expected re- 
moved from temporal scenes. With a constitution ten- 
der on the whole, Droysen long ago felt his power de- 
clining, and nothing but the great energy with which 
he bore up in spite of increasingly morbid conditions 
made it possible for him to continue his lectures till 
just before last Whitsuntide. Even three days before 
this festival he delivered in his customary manner his 
carefully elaborated paper in the Academy of Sciences, 
a member of which he had been for years. 

1 July, 1884. Kanke died on May 23, 188(3. 



JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. XXXV 

Only a little while before his end, upon the 
pressing advice of his physician, he saw himself neces- 
sitated to announce by a notice upon the blackboard 
a cessation of his lectures for that Semester. He was 
destined never to resume them. His strength sank 
rapidly. His children hurried anxiously to his side, 
to ease by their devoted and loving care the last days 
of their father, who since the death of his dearly loved 
second wife had been alone. Meantime his weakness 
increased, unconsciousness alternating with conscious- 
ness. Once more, however, four days before his end, 
Droysen's strong love for work came back. He had 
himself carried to his writing-desk and his pen handed 
him. But the fingers that had so often guided it now 
refused the service. Deeply moved, Droysen laid down 
the pen, tears streaming from his eyes. He knew it 
now ; he was at the goal. He proceeded to arrange 
everything with care, even in respect to his funeral. 
On the evening of June 18th the shadows of death 
sank down around him deeper and deeper. But yet, 
clear to the last, he had for every tender service of 
love, bringing its brief alleviation, its transient coolness 
to the heated head, a mild, friendly smile of thanks. 
Thus, surrounded by the faithful, ministering love of 
his children, he fell softly and calmly asleep. 

Wind and clouds now play over the spot which con- 
ceals what of Droysen was mortal ; but the breath of 
immortality also sighs above that grave and sweeps 
withal through the works which he created. 

Have, i>in anima. 

Dr. HERM. KRUGER. 

BoLTENHAGEN, July, 1884. 



OUTLINE 



THE PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 



Outline of the Principles of History. 



No one will withhold from historical studies the 
recognition of having, like others, their place in the 
living scientific movement of our age. New historical 
discoveries are busily making, old beliefs are examined 
afresh, and the results presented in appropriate form. 

But if we demand a scientific raison cC etre for these 
studies, if we wish to know their relation to other 
forms of human knowledge, and the underlying reason 
why they take the course they do, they are not in con- 
dition to give satisfactory information. 

Not that they regard themselves logically above such 
questions, or incompetent to solve them. Now and 
then an attempt has been made to do this, the solution 
having been sometimes put forward within the very 
circle of historical studies, sometimes borrowed from 
other branches of learning. By some the history of 
the world is assigned a place in the Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy. Writers of a different tendency, skeptical 
about logical necessities, all the more confidently on 
this account recommend us to develop history out of 
material conditions, out of the figures put down in 
statistics. Another, and he only expresses in the form 
of a theory what men without number are thinking or 
have thought, questions the very existence of ' so-called 
history.' w Peoples exist purely in the abstract ; the 

3 



4 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

individual is the real thing. The history of the world 
is strictly a mere accidental configuration, destitute of 
metaphysical significance.' Elsewhere, pious zeal - 
pious, of course, more in appearance than in reality, 
insists upon substituting the miraculous workings of 
God's power under his unsearchable decree, for the 
natural causal connection of human things, a doctrine 
having this advantage, at least, that, being stated, it is , 
under no further indebtedness to the understanding. 

Within the sphere of historical studies, even so early 
as the close of the Eighteenth Century, the Gottingen 
school of that day had busied itself with these general 
questions ; and they have been handled afresh from 
time to time ever since. Writers have undertaken to 
show that history is ' essentially political history,' and 
that the many sorts of elementary, auxiliary and other 
sciences belonging to our department group themselves 
around this kernel. Then the essence of history has 
been recognized as consisting in method, and this __ 
characterized as a ' criticism of the sources,' as a setting 
forth of the '■pure fact.' Others have found the de- 
finitive task of our science in artistic exposition, ; the 
work of the historical artist,' and even celebrate as the 
greatest historian of our time him whose exposition 
approaches nearest to Sir Walter Scott's romances. 

The historical sense is too active in human nature 
not to have been forced to find its expression early, 
and, wherever conditions were fortunate, in appropriate 
forms ; and it is this natural tact which points out the 
way and gives the form to our studies even at the 
present time. But the pretensions of the science 
could not be satisfied with this. It must make clear 



PEmCIPLES OF HISTORY. 5 

to itself its aims, its means, its foundations. Only 
thus can it exalt itself to the height of its task ; only 
thus, to use expressions from Bacon, can it set aside 
the preconceptions now governing its procedure, the 
idols of the theatre, tribe, forum and den, for whose 
maintenance just as powerful interests are active now 
as once interposed in favor of astrology, of lawsuits 
against witches, and of belief in pious and impious 
witchcraft. By thus becoming conscious, history will 
make good its jurisdiction over an incomparably wider 
realm of human interests than it is likely or possible 
that the science should master otherwise. 

The need of attaining clear conceptions touching our 
science and its problem, every instructor who has to 
introduce youth into the study will feel, just as I have, 
though others will have found out how to satisfy it in 
a different manner. I for my part was urged to such 
investigations especially by a sort of questions which 
are usually passed over because in our daily experience 
they seem to have been solved long ago. 

The political events of to-day, to-morrow belong to 
history. The business transaction of to-day, if of con- 
sequence enough, takes rank after a generation, as a 
piece of history. How is it that these mere affairs turn 
into history ? 1 What criterion is to determine whether 
they become history or not? The contract of purchase 
concluded to-day between private individuals, — is it 
the thousand years that transforms it into an historical 
document ? 

Every one declares history to be an important means 
of culture ; and in the education of to-day it certainly 
1 Geschafte into Gexrhichte. 



6 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

is a weighty element. But why is it thus ? In what 
form ? Did not history render the same service to the 
Greeks of the age of Pericles'? To be sure the form 
was different then, — probably that of the Homeric 
Songs. And how can national poems have had to 
Greeks and to Germany under the Hohenstauffen the 
educational value of historical instruction? 

Observation of the present teaches us how, from 
different points of view, every matter of fact is differ- 
ently apprehended, described and connected with 
others ; how every transaction in private as well as in 
public life receives explanations of the most various 
kinds. A man who judges carefully will find it 
difficult to gather out of the plenitude of utterances 
so different, even a moderately safe and permanent 
picture of what has been done and of what has been 
purposed. Will the correct judgment be any more 
certain to be found after a hundred years, out of the so 
soon lessened mass of materials ? Does criticism of the 
sources lead to anything more than the reproduction of 
views once held? Does it lead to the 'pure fact? ' 

And if such querying is possible as to the ' objective ' 
content of history, what becomes of historical truth? 
Can history be in any sense characterized by truth 
without being correct? Are those right who speak of 
history in general as a fable agreed upon ? A certain 
natural feeling, as well as the undoubting and agreeing 
judgment of all times tells us that it is not so, that 
there is in human things a unity, a truth, a might, 
which, the greater and more mysterious it is, so much 
the more challenges the mind to fathom it and to get 
acquainted with it. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. i 

Right here another list of questions presented itself, 
questions touching the relation of this potency in his- 
tory to the individual, touching his position between 
this and the moral potencies which bear him on and 
bring him to self-realization, touching his duties and 
his highest duty; considerations leading far beyond the 
immediate compass of our study, and of course, con- 
vincing us that the problem by them presented was to 
be investigated only in its most general connections. 
Could one venture to undertake such investigation 
with only the circle of information and attainments 
that grow out of the historian's studies? Could 
these studies presume, as the studies of nature have 
done with so splendid a result, to make themselves 
their own foundation ? One thing was clear : that if 
the historian, with his merely historical cognizance of 
what philosophy, theology, the observation of nature, 
etc., have wrought out, was to take hold of these 
difficult problems, he must have no inclination to 
speculate, but must in his own empirical way proceed 
from the simple and solid basis of what has been done 
and discovered. 

I found in William von Humboldt's investigations 
the thought which, so I believed, opened the way to a 
sort of a solution to these problems. He seemed to me 
to be for the historical sciences a Bacon. We cannot 
speak of a philosophical system of Humboldt's, but 
what the ancient expression ascribes to the greatest of 
historians, 'political understanding and the power of 
interpretation,' 1 these he possessed in remarkable har- 
mony. His thinking, his investigations, likewise the 

1 t/ <ruj>ecrts TroXtTiKri Kal r) dvva.fj.is epfj.Tjv€VTiKr/. 



8 JOHANN GUSTAV DKOYSEN. 

wonderful knowledge of the world won through that 
active life of his, led him to a view of the world which 
had its centre of gravity in his own strong and 
thoroughly cultivated sense of the ethical. As he 
traced out the practical and the ideal creations of the 
human race, languages in particular, he became ac- 
quainted with the at once spiritual and sensuous nature 
of the race, as well as with the perpetually creative 
power which, as men mutually impart and receive, 
belongs to the expression of this nature; these, the 
nature and the power, being the two elements in which 
the moral world, producing, so to speak, ever new 
electric currents in ever new polarizations, moves by 
creating forms and creates forms by moving. 

It appeared to me possible by the aid of these 
thoughts to pierce deeper into the cpiiestion of our 
science, to explain its problem and its procedure, and, 
from a true recognition of its nature, to develop in a 
general way its proper form. 

In the following paragraphs I have endeavored to 
do this. They have grown out of lectures delivered 
by me upon the Encyclopedia and Methodology of 
History. My aim has been to give in this " Outline " 
a general view of the whole subject, and to hint at 
particulars only so far as seemed necessary to make 
clear the sense and connection. 



INTRODUCTION. 



I. — HISTORY. 

§ 1. 

Nature and History are the Avidest conceptions under 
which the human mind apprehends the world of phe- 
nomena. And it apprehends them thus, according to 
the intuitions of time and space, which present them- 
selves to it as, in order to comprehend them, it analyzes 
for itself in its own way the restless movement of 
shifting phenomena. 

Objectively, phenomena do not separate themselves 
according to space and time ; it is our apprehension 
that thus distinguishes them, according as they appear 
to relate themselves more to space or to time. 

The conceptions of time and space increase in defin- 
iteness and content in the measure in which the side- 
by-side character of that which is and the successive 
character of that which has become, are perceived, 
investigated and understood. 

§2. 

The restless movement in the world of phenomena 
causes us to apprehend things as in, a constant develop- 
ment, this transition on the part of some seeming 
merely to repeat itself periodically, in case of others 
to supplement the repetition with ascent, addition, 



10 JOHANX GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

ceaseless growth, the system continually making, so to 
speak, ' a contribution to itself.' x In those phenomena 
in which we discover an advance of this kind, we take 
the successive character, the element of time, as the 
determining thing. These Ave grasp and bring together 
as History. 

§3. 

To the human eye, only what pertains to man appears 
to partake of this constant upward and onward motion, 
and of this, such motion appears to be the essence and 
the business. The ensemble of this restless progress 
upward is the moral world. Only to this does the ex- 
pression 'History' find its full application. 

§ 4. 

The science of History is the result of empirical 
perception, experience and investigation, laropia. All 
empirical knowledge depends upon the ' specific energy ' 
of the nerves of sense, through the excitation of which 
the mind receives, not 'images' but signs of things 
without, which signs this excitation has brought before 
it. Thus it develops for itself systems of signs, in 
which the corresponding external things present them- 
selves to it, constituting a world of ideas. In these 
the mind, continually correcting, enlarging and build- 
ing up its world, finds itself in possession of the 
external world, that is, so far as it can and must possess 
this in order to grasp it, and, by knowledge, will and 
formative power, rule it. 

1 iirldoa-is els axn6. Aristotle, de anima, II, 5, 7. Appendix II at the 
end of this " Outline " is an amplification of §§ 1 and 2 here. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 11 

§ 5. 
All empirical investigation governs itself according 
to the data to which it is directed, and it can only 
direct itself to such data as are immediately present to 
it and susceptible of being cognized through the senses. 
The data for historical investigation are not past things, 
for these have disappeared, but things which are still 
present here and now, whether recollections of what 
was done, or remnants of things that have existed and 
of events that have occurred. 

§ 6. 

Every point in the present is one which has come to 
be. That which it was and the manner whereby it 
came to be, — these have passed away. Still, ideally, 
its past character is yet present in it. Only ideally, 
however, as faded traces and suppressed gleams. 
Apart from knowledge these are as if they existed not. 
Only searching vision, the insight of investigation, is 
able to resuscitate them to a new life, and thus cause 
light to shine back into the empty darkness of the past. 
Yet what becomes clear is not past events as past. 
These exist no longer. It is so much of those past 
things as still abides in the now and the here. These 
quickened traces of past things stand to us in the 
stead of their originals, mentally constituting the 
'present' of those originals. 

The finite mind possesses only the now and the here. 
But it enlarges for itself this poverty-stricken 
narrowness of its existence, forward by means of its 
willing and its hopes, backward through the fullness of 



\± JOHANN GUSTAV DEOYSEN. 

it.s memories. Thus, ideally lo'eking together in itself 
both the future and the past, it possesses an experience 
analogous to eternity. The mind illuminates its 
present with the vision and knowledge of past events, 
which yet have neither existence nor duration save in 
and through the mind itself. 'Memory, that mother of 
Muses, who shapes all things,' 1 creates for it the forms 
and the materials for a world which is in the truest 
sense the mind's own. 

§7. 
It is only the traces which man has left, only what 
mail's hand and man's mind has touched, formed, 
stamped, that thus lights up before us afresh. As he 
goes on fixing imprints and creating form and order, in 
every such utterance the human being brings into 
existenee an expression of his individual nature, of his 
'I.' Whatever residue of such human expressions and 
imprints is anywise, anywhere, present to ns, that 
speaks to ns and we can understand it. 



II. -THE HISTORICAL .METHOD. 

§8. 
The method of historical investigation is determined 
by the morphological character of its material. The 
essence of historical method is understanding by means 
of investigation. 

§9. 

The possibility of this understanding arises from the 
kinship of our nature with that of the utterances lying 

^ lj.vri/j.7jv dirdvTOJv /j.ovffofxriTop epydv-qv. — JEschylus, Prometheus. 4*'! I 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 13 

before us as historical material. A further condition 
of this possibility is the fact that man's nature, at once 
sensuous and spiritual, speaks forth every one of its 
inner processes in some form apprehensible by the 
senses, mirrors these inner processes, indeed, in every 
utterance. On being perceived, the utterance, by pro- 
jecting itself into the inner experience of the per- 
cipient, calls forth the same inner process. Thus, on 
hearing the cry of anguish we have a sense of the 
anguish felt by him who cries. Animals, plants and 
the things of the inorganic world are understood by us 
only in part, only in a certain way, in certain relations, 
namely those wherein these things seem to us to corre- 
spond to categories of our thinking. Those things 
have for us no individual, at least no personal, exist- 
ence. Inasmuch as we seize and understand them only 
in the relations named, we do not scruple to set them at 
naught as to their individual existences, to dismember 
and destroy them, to use and consume them. With 
human beings, on the other hand, with human utter- 
ances and creations, we have and feel that we have an 
essential kinship and reciprocity of nature : every k I ' 
enclosed in itself, yet each in its utterances disclosing 
itself to every other. 

§ 10. 
The individual utterance is understood as a simple 
speaking forth of the inner nature, involving possibility 
of inference backward to that inner nature. This 
inner nature, offering this utterance in the way of a 
specimen, is understood as a central force, in itself one 
and the same, yet declaring its nature in this single 
voice, as in every one of its external efforts and expres- 



14 -MM I ANN GUSTAV DKOYSEN. 

sions. The individual is understood in the total, and 
the total from the individual. 

The person who understands, because he, like him 
whom he has to understand, is an L I,' a totality in him- 
self, fills out for himself the other's totality from the 
individual utterance and the individual utterance from 
the other's totality. The process of understanding is 
as truly synthetic as analytic, as truly inductive as 
deductive. 

§ 11. 

From the logical mechanism of the understanding 
process there is to be distinguished the act of the 
faculty of understanding. This act results, under the 
conditions above explained, as an immediate intuition, 
wherein soul blends with soul, creatively, after the 
manner of conception in coition. 

§ 12. 

The human being is, in essential nature, a totality in 
himself, but realizes this character only in understand- 
ing others and being understood by them, in the moral 
partnerships of family, people, state, religion, etc. 

The individual is only relatively a totality. He 
understands and is understood only as a specimen and 
expression of the partnerships Avhose member he is and 
in whose essence and development he has part, him- 
self being but an expression of this essence and 
development. 

The combined influence of times, peoples, states, 
religions, etc., is only a sort of an expression of the 
absolute totality, whose reality we instinctively surmise 
and believe in because it comes before us in our ' Cogito 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 15 

ergo sum,' that is, as the certainty of our own personal 
being, and as the most indubitable fact which we can 
know. 

§ 13. 
The false alternative between the materialistic and 
the idealistic view of the world reconciles itself in the 
historical, namely in the view to which the moral world 
leads us ; for the essence of the moral world resides in 
the fact that in it at every moment the contrast spoken 
of reconciles itself in order to its own renewal, renews 
itself in order to its own reconciliation. 

§ 14. 
According to the objects and according to the nature 
of human thinking, the three possible scientific methods 
are : the speculative, philosophically or theologically, 
the physical, and the historical. Their essence is to 
find out, to explain, to understand. Hence the old 
canon of the sciences : Logic, Physics, Ethics, which 
are not three ways to one goal, but the three sides of a 
prism, through which the human eye, if it will, may, 
in colored reflection, catch foregleams of the eternal 
light whose direct splendor it would not be able to bear. 

§ 15. 
The moral world, ceaselessly moved by many ends, 
and finally, so we instinctively surmise and believe, by 
the supreme end, is in a state of restless development 
and of internal elevation and growth, 'on and on, as 
man eternalizes himself.' 1 Considered in the successive 
character of these its movements the moral world pre- 

1 A<1 ora ad ora come L'uom s'etrrna. — Dante, Inferno, XV, 84. 



16 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

sents itself to us as History. With every advancing 
step in this development and growth, the historical 
understanding becomes wider and deeper. History, 
that is, is better understood and itself understands 
better. The knowledge of History is History itself. 
Restlessly working on, it cannot but deepen its investi- 
gations and broaden its circle of vision. 

Historical things have their truth in the moral forces, 
as natural things have theirs in the natural 'laws,' 
mechanical, physical, chemical, etc. Historical things 
are the perpetual actualization of these moral forces. 
To think historically, means to see their truth in the 
actualities resulting from that moral energy. 

HI. — THE PROBLEM OF THIS "OUTLINE." 



■/'/;■ or 



§ 16. 
This Historik or discussion of the Principles of 
History is not an encyclopedia of the historical sciences, 
or a philosophy or theology of history, or a physics of 
the historical world. Least of all is it a discipline for 
the artistic composition of history. It must set its own 
problem, which is to be an organon of historical thinking 
and investigation. 

§ 17. 
Canvass the history of this problem from Thucydides 
and Polybius to Jean Bodin and Lessing. The kernel of 
the question is in William von Humboldt's Introduction 
to the Kawi-layxguage. See also Gervinus's ' Principles 
of History' [Historik'], Comte's 'Positive Philosophy,' 
Schaffle's 'Structure and Life of the Social Body,' etc. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 17 

§ 18. 

'■Historik ' embraces three doctrines : that of method 
for historical investigation, that of the system belonging 
to the matter to be historically investigated, and that of 
the systematic presentation of the historical results. 



THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD. 

§ 19. 

Historical investigation presupposes the reflection 
that even the content of our k I ' is a mediated content, 
one that has been developed, that is, is an historical 
result (§ 12.) The recognized means of this mediation 
is memory, avdfxvrjcns- Our knowledge is at first a 
something received, a something which has passed 
over to us, ours, yet as if not ours. It is a long step to 
where we feel ourselves free with this knowledge, and 
have it freely at our command. Out of the totality 
of that which we thus fully possess, out of our appre- 
ciation of this k content ' as ours, and our recognition of 
ourselves in it, there is begotten in us (§ 10) a new idea 
of this knowledge as a whole, of each part of it and of 
each particular element in it. This idea arises in us 
involuntarily. There it is as a matter of fact. But is 
the truth really as this idea presents it to us? To be 
convinced touching its validity we must reflect upon 
the manner in which it had origin in us; we must 
investigate the combination of means through which 
we come by it: we must test it. make it clear, prove it. 



18 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 



I. _ INVENTION. 

§20. 

The point of departure in investigation is historical 
interrogation. Invention puts us in possession of the 
materials for historical work. It is the miner's art, that 
of finding" and bringing to the light, k the underground 
work.' 1 

§ 21. 

Historical material is partly what is still immediately 
present, hailing from the times which we are seeking to 
understand (Remains), partly whatever ideas human 
beings have obtained of those times, and transmitted to 
be remembered (Sources), partly things wherein both 
these forms of material are combined (Monuments). 

§ 22. 

Amid the abundance of historical Remains may be 
distinguished : 

(a) Works whose form is due to human agency, — 
artistic, technical etc., as roads, plats of leveled ground, 
and the like. 

(5) Conditions constituting what we have spoken 
of as the 'moral partnerships,' viz., customs and usages, 
laws, political and ecclesiastical ordinances, and the 
like. 

(e) Whatever sets forth thoughts, items of knowl- 
edge, or intellectual processes of any kind, as philoso- 
phemes, literatures, mythological beliefs, etc., also 
historical works as products of their time. 

1 Niebuhr. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 19 

(d) Papers relating to business, as correspondence, 
business bills, archives of all soils, and other things of 
this nature. 

§ 23. 

Remains in the creation of which the purpose of 

• serving the memory cooperated with other aims, such 

as ornaments, practical utility, etc., are Monuments. 

- These include documents to certify to posterity when a 

piece of work was concluded, likewise all kinds of 

works of art, inscriptions, medals, and in a certain 

sense, coins. Finally comes in every kind of marking 

by means of monuments, even the stone landmark, and 

things as insignificant as titles, arms, and names. 

§24. 

Under Sources belong past events as human under- 
standing has apprehended them, shaped them to itself 
and passed them over to the service of the memory. 

Every recollection of the past, so long as it is not 
externally fixed, as in verses, in sacred formulae, or in 
written composition of some kind, partakes the life 
and the transformation of the circle of ideas belonging 
to those who cherish it. Tradition in the Church of 
Rome illustrates this. The credibility of oral tradition 
is only quantitatively different from that of written. 

Our Sources may grasp the subject either in a pre- 
dominantly subjective way, or in the closest possible 
accord with the facts, 'pragmatically.' To the sub- 
jective order belong partly such Sources as present a 
view clouded by a superabundance of phantasy or of 
feeling, like legends, historical lyrics, etc., partly such 
as use historical matter of fact only as material for 



20 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

considerations and arguments of a different nature, as 
speeches in court, parliament, etc., documents relating 
to public law, etc. The Prophets, Dante, Aristophanes, 
etc., also illustrate Sources of this kind. 

Within the ' pragmatic ' order of Sources we may dis- 
tinguish those which mostly impart only isolated facts, 
from those which classify more. In addition to this 
difference the aim with which the facts were appre- 
hended will help to determine the meaning of our 
Sources. The apprehension will obviously vary accord- 
ing as it was intended to aid the author's own memory, 
or for others, for one person, or a few, or all, for 
contemporaries or for posterity, for instruction, for 
entertainment, or for purposes of business. 

The so-called ' Derived Sources ' are views of other 
men's views. v 

§25. 

The three species of materials will vary in relative 
value according to the purpose for which the investiga- 
tor is to use them. Even the very best give him, so to 
speak, only polarized light. By the use of what we have 
termed Remains, he may with entire certainty penetrate 
to minor data, yes, even to the very minutest. The 
keener his sight in fathoming these deeps the more will 
he get out of them. However, data of this class form 
but accidental and scattered fragments. 

In consequence of the nature of its materials empiri- 
cal inquiry in history must dispense with the great 
helps which corresponding study in the physical world 
possesses in observation and experiment. Still the fact 
that all sorts of experiments are yet making in the 
moral world and under the most thorough observation, 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 21 

compensates historical investigation through the clear- 
ing up of its obscure l x' by means of analogies. 

§ 26. 
Historical Interrogation results in our ascertaining 
what Remains, Monuments and Sources are to be 
brought forward for the ' reply.' It is the art of his- 
torical ' investigation ' to extend and complete the 
historical material ; and especially : (a) by search and 
discovery, as of a diviner ; (ft) by combination, which, 
putting things in their proper places, makes into mate- 
rial for history that which appears not to be such : 
witness A. Kirchoff's History of the Greek alphabet ; 

(c) by analogy, which casts light upon the subject 
through similarities of result under similar conditions ; 

(d) by hypothesis, proof of which is evidence for the 
event in question. The last would be illustrated by 
the level ground plats of the ancient German villages 
as expressions of order in the primitive community. 

§ 27. 

'Invention,' like each of the parts of Historical 
Method yet to be named, presupposes the continual co- 
operation of the others. For every one of them all 
historical knowledge and all other related knowledge, 
whether philological or pertaining to general facts, 
serves as an auxiliary science. 

IL_CEITICLSM. 

§ 28. 
Criticism does not seek 'the exact historical fact'; 
for every so-called historical fact, apart from the means 



22 .mil ANN GUSTAY DROYSEN. 

leading thereto, and the connections, conditions and 
purposes which were active at the same time, is a com- 
plex of acts of will, often many, helping and hinder- 
ing, and acts of will which, as such, passed away with 
the time to which they belonged, and lie before us now 
only either in the remnants of contemporary and 
related transformations and occurrences, or as made 
known in the views and recollections of men. 

§ 29. 

The task of Criticism is to determine what relation 
the material still before us bears to the acts of will 
whereof it testifies. The forms of the criticism are 
determined by the relation which the material to be 
investigated bears to those acts of will which gave it 

shape. 

§30. 

(rt) We must inquire whether the material actually 
is what it is taken to be or pretends to be. Reply 
to this question is given by ' criticism of its genuine- 
ness.' Proof of ungenuineness is complete when the 
time, the origin or the aim of the falsification is proved. 
The thing so proved ungenuine may serve in some other 
direction as weighty historical material. 

One application of the criticism of genuineness in 
reference to a given department is Diplomatics. The 
business of this branch is the testing of the genuineness 
of records and other pieces of writing by outward signs, 
in contrast with the so-called ' higher criticism.' 

§ 31. 
(J) We must also inquire whether the material 
has maintained its original and pretended character 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 2o 

unchanged, or, if not, what changes are to be recognized 
as having occurred in it and as therefore to be left out 
of account. This question is answered in the ' criticism 
of earlier and later forms,' known as 'diacritical pro- 
cedure.' This procedure usually results in the pointing- 
out of a so-called 'development' from the first form 
to the form before us. In such a demonstration the 
separated parts are mutually explanatory and confirm- 
atory [Ferdinand Christian Baurl. 

§ 32. 

(c) We must inquire, still further, whether the 
material, under the circumstances of its origin, did 
or could involve all that for which it is, or offers itself 
to be, taken as voucher; or whether, immediately at 
that time and place, it must not have been, or may not 
even have proposed to be, correct only partially, 
relatively and in a certain way. This question finds 
answer in the ' criticism of correctness or validity.' 

This form of criticism must ask : 

(1) Whether, judged by human experience, the fact 
stated is in itself possible. 

(2) Whether it is possible considering the alleged 
conditions and circumstances. 

In both these cases the criticism measures, in reference 
to the objects or events in question, both the given view 
itself and also the correctness of this view. 

(3) Whether any beclouding of vision is recognizable 
in the motives, aims or personal relations of the author 
of the account. 

(4) Whether incorrectness was unavoidable through 
insufficiency of the means for observation and forming 
judgment. 



24 JOHANN GUSTAV DBOYSEN. 

Ill each of these cases, (3) and (4), criticism gauges 
both the view arrived at and its correctness, in the light 
of the process and of the instrumentality by which the 
view was arrived at. 

§33. 

The application of the criticism of correctness to 
Sources is technically called k Source-criticism. ' If this 
is understood only in the sense of pointing out how one 
author has used another, it is only an occasional means, 
one among others, its business being to present or 
prepare demonstration of correctness or incorrectness. 

The Criticism of Sources distinguishes : 

(1) What a given source-document has grasped, 
reproduced, and now presents, as events, transactions, 
original words, earlier sources, etc. 

(2) What general coloring this source-document 
received from the circle of ideas jitrevalent at the time 
and place of its origin, for instance the ' demonological ' 
coloring of the fifteenth century, or the ennui, as of 
epigoni, characterizing the Alexandrian period. 

(3) What individual complexion the author himself 
has in virtue of his culture, his character, some special 
tendency, or the like. 

§ 34 

The primitive ' source ' does not consist in the dreary 
maze of contemporary opinions, accounts, reports. This 
is only the daily repeated atmospheric process of 
ascending and self-precipitating vapors from which the 
true Sources or springs are replenished. 

As a rule the earliest historical composition respecting 
an event governs all subsequent tradition. That case 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 2o 

is the most fortunate where this composition is contem- 
porary with the events which it handles; that is, before 
the effects produced by events have brought any 
change of view concerning the efficient facts and 
persons, and before any new, epoch-making event has 
created a different world of thought. 

§ 35. 

(a) We must inquire whether the material as we 
have it still contains all the points for which the inves- 
tigation seeks testimony, or in what measure it is 
incomplete. This question finds answer in the critical 
arrangement of the verified material. 

Always, or nearly always,, we have before us only 
single points out of the facts as they originally were ; 
only individual views of what existed and occurred. 
Any historical material has gaps in it, and even the 
most exact investigation is not free from errors. The 
measure of sharpness wherewith these gaps and possible 
errors are signalized is the measure of the certainty of 
our investigation. 

The critical arrangement is not settled merely accord- 
ing to the point of view of succession in time, as with 
annals. The more manifold the points of view from 
which the same materials are arranged, the larger is 
the number of solid points which the intersecting lines 
will afford. The registers in the Corpus Inscriptionum 
Latinarum illustrate this. 

§ 36. 

The outcome of criticism is not 'the exact historical 
fact.' It is the placing of the material in such a con- 



26 JOIIANN GTTSTAV DIIOYSEN. 

<lit ion as renders possible a relatively safe and correct 
view. The conscientiousness which refuses to go 
beyond the immediate results of criticism, makes the 
mistake of resigning all further work with these results 
to fancy, instead of going on to find such rules for this 
further work as shall assure its correctness. 



III. — INTERPRETATION. 
§ 37. 

Beginnings are neither sought by criticism nor de- 
manded by interpretation. In the moral Avorld nothing 
is without medial antecedents. Yet historical investi- 
gation does not propose to explain, in the sense of 
deriving, as mere effects and developments, the latter 
from the earlier, or phenomena from laws. If the 
logical necessity of the later lay in the earlier, then, 
instead of the moral world, there would be something 
analogous to eternal matter and the changes of matter. 
Were the life of History oidy a reproduction of what 
is permanently identical with itself, it would be void of 
freedom and responsibility, without moral content and 
only of an organic nature. The essence of interpreta- 
tion lies in seeing realities in past events, realities with 
that certain plenitude of conditions which they must 
have had in order that they might become realities. 

§ 38. 

As in walking are united (a) the mechanism of the 

moving limbs, (&) the tension of the muscles according 

to the evenness or unevenness, smoothness, hardness, 

etc., of the ground, (c) the will which moves the body. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 27 

and (f?) the purpose which leads the person who wills 
to walk, so criticism completes itself from four points 
of view. The exaltation of any one of these as by 
itself essentially or exclusively determinative of va- 
lidity, is the source of many theoretical and practical 
errors. It is doctrinaire (§ 92). 

§39. 

(a) ' Pragmatic ' interpretation takes up the body of 
criticised facts according to the causal nexus naturally 
binding together the original events in their course, in 
order to re-construct this course of events as it once 
actually was. By ' body of criticised facts ' is meant 
those remains and those views of the once actual course 
of events which have been verified and arranged in the 
work of criticism. In case of plentiful material the 
simple demonstrative procedure is sufficient. If the 
material is defective, the nature of the thing as made 
known to us from similar cases leads us to apply 
analogy, viz., a comparison between the known quantity 
and the ' x ' in question. The analogy between the 
two k x's ' so far as they are mutually supplementary, 
yields the ' comparative procedure.' The supposition 
of a connection in which the matter possessed by us 
only in fragments displays itself as fitting into the 
' curve ' of the assumed connection, thus confirming' 
itself visibly, as it were, is ' hypothesis.' 

§ 40. 
(6) The l interpretation of the conditions ' proceeds 
upon the truth that we must think the conditions which 
made the original fact possible and possible so and so, 



28 -IOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

as a part of the fact itself, and hence as certain to 
enter, however fragmentarily, into all views and rem- 
nants of the fact. Thus the position, in itself not 
beautiful, of the Borghese gladiator reveals the line of 
the pediment for which the statue was intended. 

The conditions relating to space, omitting innumer- 
able insignificant ones, receive elucidation from details 
like the geography of a theatre of war and of a, battle- 
field, the position of a country's natural boundaries, 
the valley formation of Egypt, the marshes upon the 
North Sea, and many more. 

The conditions of time comprise that already present 
state of things into which the event in question made 
its entry, and the contemporary events which had a 
more or less determinative effect upon it. 

A third order of conditions is found in the means, 
material and moral, by which the course of things was 
rendered possible and actual. The material means in- 
clude the manifold sorts of substances and instruments, 
and along with these an immeasurable held of "techno- 
logical interpretation,' which thus far remains almost 
untouched. The moral means include the passions of 
men, the moods of the masses, the prejudices or views 
governing them, etc. The general, the statesman, the 
artist, who wishes to operate upon the masses and 
through them, has his character in that same measure 
determined by them. 

§ 41. 

(6-) "Psychological interpretation' seeks in the 
given fact, the acts of will which produced it. Such 
interpretation may take cognizance of the subject who 
willed, and of the energy of his volition so far as this 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 29 

influenced the course of events under survey, and of 
his intellectual force so far as this determined his will. 
But neither did the subject of the volition fully ex- 
haust himself in this one turn of things, nor did that 
which came to pass come to pass merely through the 
strength of this one man's will or intelligence. It is 
neither the pure nor the entire expression of his per- 
sonality- 
Personality as such does not find in History the tests 
of its value, in what it undertakes, does or suffers 
there. To it is reserved a circle of its own, wherein, 
however poor or rich in gifts it may be, significant or 
insignificant in respect to effects or results, it lias to do 
with itself and its God, a circle of its own, wherein is 
the truest source of its willing and existence, where 
that takes place which justifies or condemns it before 
itself and before God. His conscience QG-eicisseri) is the 
most certain (gewisseste) thing which the individual 
possesses ; it is the truth of his existence. Into this 
sanctuary the ken of investigation does not press. 

Human being understands human being, but only 
in an external way; each perceives the other's act, 
speech, mien, yet always only this one deed or 
feature, tins single element. Prove that I under- 
stand my fellow lightly or entirely I cannot. It is 
another thing for a friend to believe in his friend ; or, 
in a case of love, for the one party to hold fast to the 
other's imasfe as that other's true self : ' Thou must 
be so for so I understand thee.' That sort of confi- 
dence is the secret of all education. 

The poets, as Shakspere, develop the course of events 
which they present, from the characters of certain 



30 .JOIIANN GTJSTAV DROYSEN. 

persons. They poetize, on to each event a psychological 
interpretation. But in actual facts effects come 
through other elements than personalities. Things 
take their course in spite of the will, good or bad, of 
those through whom they come to pass. The con- 
tinuity of History, its work and its advance, lies in the 
moral potencies (§ 15). In these potencies all have 
part, each in his place. Through them, mediately, 
even the meanest and poorest participates in the life of 
History. But even the most highly endowed man, 
strongest of will and most exalted in power, is only an 
element in this movement o"f the moral potencies, 
though always, in his place, specially characteristic and 
efficient. In this role and in this only does historical 
investigation view any man, not for his person's sake 
but on account of his position or work in this or that 
one among the moral potencies, on account of the idea 
whose bearer he was. 

§42. 

(jT) The k interpretation of ideas ' fills up the gap 
which psychological interpretation leaves. For the 
individual builds a world for himself in that measure 
in which he has part in the moral potencies. And the 
more diligently and successfully he builds, in his place 
and for the brief space of his life, the more has he 
furthered those partnerships in which he lived and 
which lived in him; and the more has he on his part 
served the moral potencies which survive him. With- 
out them man were not man; but they develop, grow 
and rise only in the united work of men, of peoples, of 
times, only in the progressive history whose develop- 
ment and growth is their 1111101(11112:. 






PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 31 

The ethical ' system ' of any period is only the grasp- 
ing and bringing together of the ethical life thus far 
unfolded; only an attempt to sum it up and speak it 
out according to its theoretical content. 
r Every period is a complex of the outworkings of all 
the moral potencies, however developed or rudimentary 
their unfolding may be, however much the higher may 
still be veiled in the lower, as when the State existed in 
the form of the family. 

§ 43. 

In the great diversity of the moral spheres wherein 
human life takes root and moves, investigation finds 
the list of questions with which it approaches any 
given historical material in order to interpret it as to 
its ethical content. 

We can proceed in either of two ways. 

(a) We may take a statical view, observing in the 
materials before us the state of the moral formations as 
they existed at the time in question and up to that 
time. In this way we get the ' ethical horizon ' within 
which stood everything that was and was done at this 
period among this people. We thus secure the measure 
for every individual process within this period among 
this people. 

(5) Or, dynamically, we may seek and seize the 
progressive elements in the given state of moral forma- 
tions, and by putting these into relation with that 
state to which they have led in acting themselves out, 
catch sight of the movement at that period and among 
that people, the striving and struggling of men, their 
victories and defeats. 



32 JOHANN GUST AY DROYKEN. 

§44. 

In such movement it is now this, now that, among 
the moral potencies, which takes the lead, and it often 
seems as if this leading potency were alone involved, 
eveiything else being subordinate to it. As the 
thought of this time, this people, this man, it inflames 
men's minds and leads, dominates and impels society to 
take a step essentially forward. 

The thought or the complex of thoughts which 
interpretation points out in any course of events, is to 
us the truth of that course of events. The course of 
events is to us the effect, the phenomenal form, of this 
thought. 

Our methodical reproduction of the facts must by its 
correctness enable the thought to make good its char- 
acter as underlying the course of events, and the course 
of events to justify the thought. For that thought is 
to us true to which an existence corresponds, and that 
existence true which corresponds to a thought. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SYSTEM. 

§ 45. 
The realm of historical method is the cosmos of the 
moral world. The moral world as it sweeps restlessly 
on from past to future every moment forms an endless 
maze of affairs, circumstances, interests, and conflicts. 
There are manifold points of view, technical, legal, 
religious, political, and the like, from which this moral 
scene can be considered and scientifically handled. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 33 

What goes on daily in this moral world is never done 
or purposed by any sensible person as history. It is 
only subsequently that a peculiar way of surveying the 
finished and the past makes history out of common 
doings {Greschi elite out of Gesehdfte). To apprehend 
the moral world historically means to apprehend it 
according to its development and growth, according to 
the causal succession of its movement (§ 15). 

§ 46. 
The secret of all movement or motion is its end 
(to o6ev rj Kivrjais). Inasmuch as historical investigation 
is directed to the advancing movement of the moral 
world, takes account of its direction, sees end after end 
unveil and fulfil itself, it infers and concludes (§12) 
to a supreme end wherein the movement completes 
itself, wherein what makes this world of men keep 
moving, circling and ceaselessly hastening on is seen to 
be rest, consummation, an eternal present. 

§47. 

The human being during his space of life in the 
finite has, in virtue of his likeness to God, to be an 
infinite subject, a totality in himself, his own measure 
and end ; but not being like the Godhead also a causa 
sui, he has not to become, unaided, what he ought to 
be. Into his character as a human being he develops 
only in the moral partnerships. The moral potencies 
form him (§ 12). They live in him and he lives in 
them. Born into an already existent moral world — 
for the first child had father and mother — thus born 
to be conscious, free and responsible, each man for 



34 J OH ANN GUST A V DROYSEN. 

himself (§ 4"2) in these moral partnerships and using 
them as helps, builds his little world, the bee-cell of 
his 'I.' Each of these cells is conditioned and sup- 
ported by its neighbor, and in turn conditions and 
supports. All together they form a restlessly growing 
building, conditioned and supported by the existence 
of its minute, yes, of its minutest parts. 

§ 48. 

By this building and forming process in its individu- 
als, developing as it works, humanity creates the cosmos 
of the moral world. Without the restless growth and 
development of its moral partnerships, that is, without 
History, its work would be like a mountain of infusoria 
shells. Without the consciousness of continuity, viz., 
without History, its work would be as barren as a plain 
of sand, the sport of the winds. Without the conscious- 
ness of ends and of the highest end, without the 
Theodicy of History, its continuity would be a mere 
motion in a circle, repeating itself. 

§49. 

The moral world is to be considered historically : 

I. In relation to the Matter wherein it creates forms. 

II. In relation to the Forms into which it shapes 
itself. 

III. In relation to the Workers through whom it 
builds itself up. 

IV. In relation to the Ends which realize themselves 
in its movement. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 35 

I.— THE WORK OF HISTORY IN RELATION 
TO ITS KINDS OF MATTER. 

§ 50. 

The Matter for the work of History comprises what 
nature originally gave and what History itself has 
evolved. Both these are at once the condition and the 
means of this work, at once its business and its limit- 
ation. The ceaseless enlargement of the matter for 
the work is the measure of the enlargement of the 
work itself. 

§51. 

(a) As man studies and comprehends nature, rules 
and transforms nature to serve human ends, the work 
of History lifts nature up into the moral sphere, and 
spreads abroad over the circle of the earth the signs, 
the aerugo nobilis of human will and power. Such 
signs are discoveries, inventions, improvements, agri- 
culture, mining, the training and breeding of animals, 
changes produced in countries and landscapes by the 
transmigration of plants and animals, the circle of the 
sciences, and many others parallel to each of those 
named. 

§52. 

(5) The work of History causes the mere creature 
man, by discovering in the sweat of his brow what he 
is designed to be, to realize this design and to discover 
it by realizing it. Out of the mere genus homo it thus 
makes the historical man, which means the moral man. 
Amplification of this would involve Anthropology, 



36 JOHANN GUST A V DROYSEN. 

Ethnography, the question of races and of the crossing 
of races, the propagation of the human race, and so on. 

§53. 
(c) Those human formations which have come to be, 
resulting from the work and circumstances of History, 
are constantly becoming in their turn norm to that 
work, as well as impulse and means to new work. 
Hence the value of statistics. Hence the historian 
must study poverty, commerce, etc., and all that com- 
prises the so-called history of civilization. 

§54. 
(<7) Out of the purposes of men and the ardor or 
passion with which they surrender to these, History 
forms her incentives and impelling forces, and produces 
her massive effects. National spirit, particularism, 
fanaticism, rivalries and so on illustrate this. 



II. — THE WORK OF HISTORY IX RELATION 
TO ITS FORMS. 

§ 55. 
The Forms in which the work of History moves on 
are the moral partnerships, whose types, as moral poten- 
cies, are in the heart and conscience of human beings. 
' He who cannot enter into community or who on 
account of his self-sufficiency needs nothing, is either a 
brute or a God." 1 In the moral potencies lies the 

1 '0 Se nr) dvva.fj.evos Koivwveiv 77 firiSev 8e6fievos 5t avrapKeiav . . . ?; d-qptov 
97 8e6s i<TTL. — Aristotle. Politics I. "1, 12. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 37 

educating might of History, and every one has part 
in the life of History in the measure in which he has 
part in them (§ 41). Human relations are moral in 
the measure in which they educate; and they educate 
in the measure in which the moral element in them 
is mighty. 

Each of these moral potencies creates its sphere, its 
world for itself, shut up in itself, and yet making the 
demand on every man to come forward with it and 
labor on its behalf, at the same time setting in activity 
and working out in it his own moral worth. 

The individual is not an atom of humanity, one of the 
molecules which laid together in infinite number would 
produce humanity. He belongs to his family, people, 
state, etc., is a living member only through them, 'as 
the hand separate from the body is no longer a hand.' 

The doctrine of native human rights goes beyond its 
own premises. It forgets that there is no right without 
duty, and that a thousand kinds of obligations are 
fulfilled toward every individual before he himself lias 
been able to acquire a right. 

§56. 

The partnerships, in accordance with the nature of 
the human being, spring either from a natural need, or 
from an ideal one, or partly from each. As moral 
potencies they have a development and a history as well 
in themselves as in relation to other potencies and to 
everything else. 

§57. 

A. In the 'natural partnerships' that which is 
natural lias to be made moral by means of a primary 



38 .milANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

process of will, by means of love, fidelity, duty etc. 
The fact that among- men a partnership of soul issues 
from a natural need, and from mere impulse a life of 
volition and obligation and a permanent bond, dis- 
tinguishes the human being from the lower creatures. 

§ 58. 
(a) The Family. — Here, in the narrowest space, 
in the forms lowest down towards the creature, are 
found the strongest moral ties, the deepest social sub- 
structures. Under this rubric consider, with much 
else, the gradations of marriage up to monogamy, 
paternal authority, the family hearth, so-called patri- 
archal government, and blood-vengeance. 

§ 59. 
(6) The Neighborhood. — Here come, into view 
the first developments of friction in the spatial colloca- 
tion of men, involving the foundation of the village 
community as a great family. Consider the elders, 
the constituency of the community, the various plots 
of land. 

§60. 

(c) The Tribe. — Here we have a relationship 
not 'by nature but by convention,' l 'by an appetency 
for the union,' 2 as Dicaearchus says. Notice the tribal 

1 ' Not (pvaei but 64<rei. ' 

2 tt66ui rrjs <xvv65ov. Partly owning to the misspelling, in Droysen's 
text, of one of them, these Greek words caused the translator much 
perplexity, for the dissipation of which he is not a little indebted to 
the accomplished Hellenist, Arnold Green, Esq., of Providence. They 
are from a fragment of Dicsearchus handed down by Stephanus of 
Byzantium, and are given by Carolus Mullerus, Fragmenta Tlistnri- 
carum Groecarum, vol. ii, p. 238, left hand column. §0, as follows: 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 39 

hero, the gentilieia sacra, racial and clan formations, 
cognationes et propinquitates, battles and cleavages. 

§61. 

(</) The People. — We have here to study com- 
monwealths and religions as instituted by nature, the 
k ethnic ' age of the world, the fixedness and the mo- 
bility of peoples' types, in fact the whole subject of 
the so-called comparative psychology of peoples, and of 
'Demology,' including the principle of nationality. 

§ 62. 

B. In the 'ideal partnerships ' it is the task of the 
spiritual nature to find expression for itself and to pass 
over into the sphere of actual things, that thus it 
may be capable of being perceived and understood, 
becoming a bond between spirits, a common treasure. 

§ 63. 
(a) Speech and the Languages. — All thinking- 
is speaking, moving in forms which language has 
evolved even when carrying these further. Vocal 
imitation is not mere mimicry of sound, but a trans- 
lation of perceptions into vocal expression. Trace the 
successive stages of linguistic evolution, in multiplicity 
of forms, complexity of syntax, growth of specific 

djcrre irpdrepov irbdop rijs avvodov yevo/m^vris d5e\0cus crvv d5e\</>£ ; or, as 
Miiller prefers to read : yore irodq ttjs avvodov rrjs irporepov yevop.tvris. 
He is talking about the transference of a woman from one phratria to 
another, and says: "so that formerly, owing to the desire of coition 
of sisters with a brother, a different community of sacra was estab- 
lished." Miiller prefers to make the formerly refer to the desire for 
coition rather than to the time of the establishment of the different 
community of sacred rites. — Tr. 



40 ' -IOI1ANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

meanings to words. Accordingly, by no means does 
'the life of language cease where the life of History 
begins' (Schleicher). Study sound and writing, also 
the differences of thought-activity in languages, with 
phonetic writing and pictorial or ophthalmic languages. 

§64. 

(/*) The Beautiful and the Arts. — Artistic 
imitation is no mere copying, mirroring, or echo, but 
the reproduction of an impression made upon the soul, 
sometimes even to the mistaking of one sense for an- 
other, as the danseuse dances the spring. Mark the 
ideal, and also the agreeableness of the imitation of it 
(Kumohr). The technical and the musical also fall 
here. 

§ 65. 

(c) The True and the Sciences. — Canvass sci- 
entific truth, the bearing of methods, the nature of 
skepticism, of doctrine, of hypothesis, of Nominalism 
and Realism. 

§66. 

(oT) The Sacred and Religions. — Every relig- 
ion is an expression of the need and helplessness of 
finite being, and of the need it has to know itself at 
the same time as enclosed in and with an infinite Being. 
It is an attempted expression of our feeling after God, 
of our confidence of sanctification and salvation through 
him, of our certainty of the Eternal, Perfect, and Abso- 
lute. Hence faith and worship, religion and theology, 
and the sacred history involved in every religion. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 41 



§67. 

C. In the ' practical partnerships ' move those inter- 
ests which are contending and debatable, always at the 
same time bound together and driven on by men's 
natural needs, always called to and always pressing 
towards ideal ends or results, though never coming 
to any but a finitely perfect condition or a finitely 
satisfied rest. 

§68. 

(a) The Sphere of Society. — Society assumes to 
offer to every man that position in which the moral 
partnerships shall best supplement him and ho them. 
Here come up for review distinctions between classes, 
differences of blood and of culture, tradition and 
custom, the conservative elements of society, parties, 
public opinion, and so on; in fine, all that goes to 
constitute the social republic. 

§69. 

(5) The Sphere of Property. — Economic organ- 
ization assumes to embrace and to determine all the 
economic conditions and means necessarily pertaining 
to the moral partnerships : acquisition and competition, 
capital and labor, wealth and poverty, barter and money- 
exchange, the variation of values and the development 
of credit. Consider the State as a form of communism. 

§70. 
(<?) The Sphere of Justice. — The system of 
justice assumes to give foundation to and to regulate all 
the jural forms in which the moral partnerships proceed. 



4li .loll ANN GUSTAV DEOYSEN. 

Gauge here the reach of the sphere of justice. k Justice 
must remain justice,' but also must wish to be nothing 
else. The modes of establishing inputting it into 
operation and extending its scope are to be dwelt upon, 
as also the conception of the State as just an organ for 
securing justice (Rechtsstani ). 

§71. 

(d) The Sphere of Authority. — The State as- 
sumes to be the sum, the united organism, of all the 
moral partnerships, their common home and harbor, and 
so far their end. 

The State is the public power, offensive and defensive, 
both at home and abroad. In the life of the State and 
of States, authority is thus the essential tiling, in the 
same way as love is in the sphere of the family, faith 
in the sphere of the church, the beautiful in the sphere 
of art, etc. The law of authority is valid in the 
political world like that of gravity in the world of 
matter. l A ship a span long is no ship at all." 

Only the State has the duty or the right to be the 
authority in this sense. Wherever justice, property, 
society, wherever even the church, the people or the 
community come into the position of authority, the 
nature of the State is either not yet discovered or lost 
in degeneracy. Public authority is highest where the 
fullest labor, health and freedom of all the moral 
spheres feed it. The State is not related to the other 
moral spheres merely as they to one another, but em- 
braces them all within its own scope. Under its pro- 
tection and laws, under its guardianship and responsi- 
bility they all move forward to its salvation or ruin. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 4o 

The State is not the sum of the individuals whom it 
comprehends, nor does it arise from their will, nor does 
it exist on account of their will. 

The more rough the form of the State the more does 
force take in it the place of authority ; so much the 
poorer is it in freedom. 

Out of the chaos of mere peoples State upon State 
crystallizes itself. Their relation to one another moves 
on from the adversus hostem eeterna auctoritas esto, 1 to 
treaty and peaceful commerce and to international law. 
The Federal State, the confederation of States, the 
system of States, the world-system of States, — these 
are the ever further reaching wave-circles of this move- 
ment. 

Ill THE WORK OF HISTORY IN RELATION 
TO THE WORKERS. 

§72. 
All changes and formations in the moral world are 
wrought hy acts of will, as in the organic world every- 
thing is formed from cells. Acts of will are the 
efficients even where we say that the State, the people, 
the church, etc., do this and that. 

§ 73. 
Every human being is a moral subject ; only thus is 
he a human being. He has to build for himself his 
moral world (§ 47). In every individual, as a per- 
sonality in part already developed and in part still the 

1 'As against a foreigner your title shall be eternal.' Roman Law 
of the Twelve Tables. 



•44 .loll ANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

subject of development, we feel an infinite interest. 
Witness how insatiably poetry and romance follow out 
and realize this interest. 

Even the narrow, the very narrowest of human 
relations, strivings, activities, etc., have a process, a 
history, and are for the persons involved, historical. 
So family histories, local histories, special histories. 
But over all these and such histories is History. 

§74. 
As this marriage, this work of art, this State, stands 
related to the idea of the family, of the beautiful, of 
authority, so does the empirical, ephemeral ' I ' (§ 55) 
stand related to that ' I ' in which the philosopher 
thinks, the artist creates, the jndge judges, the historian 
investigates. The Universal, this ' I ' of humanity, is 
the subject of History. History is the yvdOi vavTov l of 
Humanity, its consciousness. 

§ 75. 
The life pulse of historical movement is freedom. 
The word 'freedom 1 has been understood differently 
at different times. Primarily it has only a negative 
meaning. The real meaning of freedom is unhindered 
participation in the life and work of each one of the 
moral spheres, not being disturbed or hampered in one 
of them by another, and not being excluded from any. 
Every one of them claims the whole of every man, not 
seldom to the total exclusion of the others. In the 
collision of duties, in the constantly painful perform- 
ance of these, and in the often crushing result, finite 
human nature sinks beneath the postulate of freedom. 
1 ' Know Thyself. ' 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 45 

§76. 

The problem of the life of History is not to he 
sought in the false alternative between freedom and 
necessity. Necessity is the opposite of arbitrariness, 
accident, aimlessness ; morality is the '■ought' — lying 
in the realm of the good, and is not subject to compul- 
sion. Being free is the opposite of suffering compul- 
sion, of being dead of will, destitute of ' I ' ; the moral 
is the willing of the good and is not subject to 
compulsion. 

The highest freedom is to live for the highest good. 
for the end supreme (§ 4(5), toward which the move- 
ment of all movements, the science of which is His- 
tory, is directed. Hence 'the full royal freedom of 
the moral man' (Fichte); hence the consecrating word, 
'wherefore I do crown and mitre thee over thyself." 1 

§ 77. 
All movement in the historical world goes on in this 
way: Thought, which is the ideal counterpart of things 
as they really exist, develops itself as things ought to 
be; and characters, filled with the thought, bring the 
things to its standard. The condition of being thus 
filled with a thought is passion (7ra$os), which comes 
under obligation and responsibility in and through 
action, according to the old proverb, ' act much, suffer 
much.' 2 

§ 78. 
Thoughts constitute the criticism of that which is 
and yet is not as it should be. Inasmuch as they may 

1 Perch? io te sopra te corono e mitrio. — Dante, Purgatorio, XXVII, 
142. 2 dpd<rc.i>Ti iraOelv. — JEschylus, Choephori, 313. 



46 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

bring conditions to their level, then broaden out and 
harden themselves into accord with custom, conserva- 
tism and obstinacy, new criticism is demanded, and 
thus on and on. 

The continuity of this censorship of thought, — 
'those who hold the torch passing it from one to 
another 11 — is what Hegel in his Philosophy of His- 
tory calls 'the Dialectic of History.' 

§ 79. 
That out of the already given conditions new 
thoughts arise and out of the thoughts new conditions, 

— this is the work of men. The many, indeed, living 
only for their own interests and the business of the 
present, devoted to petty, ephemeral aims, following 
habit, the general stream, the nearest suggestions — 
these work for History without choice or will, in the 
bulk, unfreely. They are the noisy thyrsus-bearers in 
the festal train of the god, 'but feAV are the genuine 
Bacchanals' [/3a/<x o i Se re iravpoi^. 2 

To anticipate the new thoughts in the movement of 
the moral world, to express them, to realize them, that 
is historical greatness, 'giving name to rolling time.' 

IV.— THE WORK OF HISTORY IK RELATION 
TO ITS ENDS. 

§ 80. 
All development and growth is movement toward an 
end, which is to be fulfilled by the movement, thus 

1 XafXTrdoa '4x ovres 5ia5iocrovcrLv a\\r)\ois. 

2 For the Greek, and the entire reference, see Plato, Phaedo, 69 C. 

— Tr. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 47 

coming to its realization. In the moral world end 
links itself to end in an infinite chain. Every one of 
these ends has primarily its own way to go and its own 
development to further, but at the same time each is a 
condition for the others and is conditioned by them. 
Often enough they repress, interrupt and contradict 
one another. Often appear here and there temporary 
and partial steps backwards; but always only that 
presently, with so much stronger advance and with 
exalted elasticity, work may he pushed forward at some 
new spot or in some new form, each form impelling the 
rest and impelled by them. 

§ 81. 

The highest end, which conditions without being 
conditioned, moving them all, embracing them all, ex- 
plaining them all, that is, the supreme end (§ 15), is 
not to be discovered by empirical investigation. 

Out of the self-consciousness of our 'I' (§ 12), out 
of the pressure of our moral will and our sense of 
obligation (§ 76), out of that longing after the one 
complete, eternal Being in whom our needy, ephemeral 
and fragmentary existence first feels its lack supplied, 
there reveals itself to us, in addition to the other 
' proofs ' of the existence of God, the one which is for 
us most demonstrative. 

Evil cleaves to the finite spirit ; it is the shadow of 
its fmiteness when it is turned to the light. It belongs 
in the economy of the historical movement, but only 
' as what vanishes in the process of things, destined for 
destruction.' 



48 JollANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

§82. 

What their genus is to animals and plants — for the 
genus exists ' in order that they may participate in the 
timeless and the divine ' 1 — that History is to human 
beings. 

Ethics is the doctrine of the moral potencies and not 

merely that of the relations of persons to them and in 

them. Ethics and History are co-ordinates, as it were ; 

for History furnishes the genesis of the 'postulate of 

the practical reason,' which postulate w pure reason' 

could not discover. 

§83. 

History is humanity becoming and being conscious 

concerning itself. The epochs of History are not the 

life periods of this ' I ' of Humanity — empirically we 

do not know whether this race 'I' is growing old or 

renewing its youth, only that it does not continue to 

be what it was or is, — but they are stages in that ego's 

self-knowledge, its knowledge of the world and of 

God. 

§ 84. 

According to the number of these traversed stages, 

grows the expression which man is able to form of the 

Supreme End, of his longing after it, and of the way 

to it. The fact that this expression broadens, enlarges 

and deepens itself with every stage, is the only thing 

which can wish to pass for the advancement of 

humanity. 

§85. 

To the finite eye beginning and end are veiled, but 

the direction of the streaming movement it can by in- 

1 tva rod ari kclI tov Belov fi€T^x wfflv - 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 49 

vestigation detect. Condemned to the narrow limit of 
the here and the now, it yet dimly espies the whence 
and the whither. It sees what it sees by being filled 
with a light in which and from which everything is, 
even its seeing being a remote reflection of that light 
itself. The direct glory of that light our eye conld 
not bear, but practicing, clarifying, inflaming its vision 
in the illuminated spheres which do disclose themselves 
to it, it catches gleams of ever greater reaches, ever 
more comprehensive empyreans. Among the circles 
thus formed the human world with its history is one. 
The historically great is only a mote in the sun-mist of 
this manifestation of God. 

§ 86. 
History is Humanity's knowledge of itself, its cer- 
tainty about itself. Ifc-k not 'the light and the truth,' 
but a search therefor, a sermon thereupon, a consecra- 
tion thereto. It is like John the Baptist, c not that Light 
but sent to bear witness of that Light.' ] 



THE DOCTRINE OF SYSTEMATIC 
PRESENTATION. 

.§87. 

As everything which moves the mind calls for a 

corresponding expression wherein the mind may shape 

lit, so also the results of historical investigation need 

their forms of expression — 'an exposition of history,' 

1 Ovk 9jv to rp&s dXK tin /xapTvprjcrri trepl rod <pwr6<i. — John, i : 8. 



50 JOHANN GTTSTAV DROYSEN. 

as Herodotus 1 has it — in order that the investigation 
may, as it were, give an account of what it has purposed 
and attained. 

§88. 

The forms of presentation here are not determined 
after the analogy of epic, lyric, or dramatic composi- 
tion,' 2 or hy the 'distribution of time and space applied 
to the acts of human freedom in the State,' 3 or follow- 
ing the accidental medley of chronicles, remarkable 
events, pictures from antiquity, narratives ' of exploits 
in which the narrator personally took part ; ' 4 but they are 
iixed by the double nature of the matter investigated. 

The investigation which knows how, from the present 
and from certain elements given in the present and 
used by it as historical material, to produce ideas of 
processes and circumstances pertaining to past events, — 
such investigation has a double nature ; it is two tilings 
at once. It is the enrichment and deepening of the 
present by clearing up past events pertaining to it, and 
it is a clearing up of these past events by unlocking and 
unfolding certain remnants of them, remnants of facts 
which were relatively obscure and perhaps exceedingly 
so, even when present. 

Still, in every case, however fruitful the investigation 
may have been, ideas arrived at by its aid are far from 
reaching the fullness of content, movement, manifold- 
ness of forms and of real energy which the orginal things 
had when they constituted ' the present.' Always, 
moreover, whatever form may be chosen for the exposi- 
tion of the results which investigation has brought 

1 iaroplrjs d7r65a£ts. 2 Gervinns. 3 Wachsmuth. 

4 Aulas Gellius : quibus rcl»i* agendis inierfuerit is qui narret. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 51 

forth, this exposition will and can correspond only par- 
tially, in a certain way and from certain points of view, 
to the existence of things as they appeared when pres- 
ent, in the eyes of men then living and active. In this 
it is analogous to representations by graphic methods. 

§89. 

For a long time historical presentation satisfied itself 
with taking up views contained in oral and written 
sources, re-shaping them more or less, and recounting 
them afresh ; and the facts regarded through this illu- 
sion as i transmitted,' passed for valid History, much as 
if the history of Alexander the ( rreat's successors should 
pass as nothing but a succession of wars, because for- 
sooth our sources for that period speak of scarcely any- 
thing else but wars. Only since we have begun to 
recognize Monuments and Remains as included in his- 
torical material and to avail ourselves of them method- 
ically, has the investigation of past events gone deeper 
and planted itself on a firmer foundation. And with 
the discovery of the immeasurable gaps in our historical 
knowledge, which investigation has not yet filled up 
and perhaps now never can fill up, investigation espies 
ever wider breadths to the domains with which it has 
to do, and anticipates one day filling them with life. 
The presentation of the results of investigation will be 
more correct the more its consciousness of its ignorance 
equals that of its knowledge (§ 35). 

§90. 

(a) ' Interrogative exposition,' to set forth the result 
at which investigation has arrived, uses the form of in- 



52 ,K>II ANN GUSTAV DK0Y8EN. 

vestigation itself. This species of exposition is not a re- 
port or minute register of the actual investigation, includ 
ing its false steps, errors and resultless measures, but it 
proceeds as if what has at last been discovered in the 
investigation were now first to be discovered or sought. 
It is a general imitation of preceding search or discovery. 
It may adopt the form of starting out from assumed 
ignorance with a question or a dilemma and seeking the 
true answer, as the advocate at the bar proceeds when 
he has to prove the so-called subjective fact from the 
objective ; or the form of taking some certain datum, 
following up its signs and traces and finding further 
data at every step until at last the total result stands 
before us connected and complete. This course cor- 
responds to that of the judge, who, in conducting an 
inquiry, has to infer the subjective fact from the ob- 
jective. The former of these methods is the more con- 
vincing and demonstrative ; the latter is the more 
dramatic and commands the attention better. For both 
it is essential to avoid what is so natural, introducing a 
chaos of irrelevant topics, casting less light upon the 
subject than upon the learned idleness of the author. 

§91. 

(5) ' Recitative exposition ' sets forth the results of 
investigation as a course of events in imitation of its 
actual development. It takes those results and shapes 
from them an image of the genesis of the historical 
facts upon which investigation has been at work. It is 
only in appearance that the k facts ' in such a case 
speak for themselves, alone, exclusively, ' objectively.' 
Without the narrator to make them speak, they would 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 53 

be dumb. It is not objectivity that is the historian's 
best glory. His justness consists in seeking to under- 
stand. 

Recitative exposition is possible in either of four forms: 

(1) The 'pragmatic* shows how an event that was 
premeditated or foreordained by fate, could occur, did 
occur, and was forced to occur so and so, through the 
movement of things converging upon that point. 

(2) The ' monographic ' shows how in its develop- 
ment and growth an historical formation grounded and 
deepened itself and wrought itself out, brought forth 
its genius, as it were. 

\ (3) The "biographical' shows how the genius of an 
historical personality determined from the beginning 
the action and suffering of that personality, and also 
manifested and attested itself in the same. 

(4) The ' catastrophic ' shows various forms, tenden- 
cies, interests, parties, etc., each with some right on its 
.side, engaged in a battle, wherein the higher thought, 
whose elements or sides display themselves in the 
parties contending in the struggle, justifies and fulfils 
itself by vanquishing and reconciling them. This 
species of exposition shows how out of the wars of the 
Titans a new world and the new gods came into being. 

§92. 
(c) ' Didactic exposition ' seizes the matter that has 
been investigated, under the thought of its great his- 
torical continuity, in order to bring out its significance 
as instruction for the present. History is not instructive 
in consequence of affording patterns for imitation or 
rules for new application, but through the fact that we 



54 JOHANN GUSTAV DEOYSEN. 

mentally live it over again and live according to it. ' It 
is a repertory of ideas furnishing matter which judg- 
ment must needs put into the crucible in order to 
purify it." 1 

Finished intellectual training is culture. This is 
military, legal, theological, if intended for these callings, 
or general culture if it has the aim of exercising and 
developing in us not tins or that individual or technical 
ability, but the human qualities in general. It may 
then be well termed ' Humanity,' for ' precisely the 
course whereby the human race arrived at its perfection, 
every individual human being must have passed over ' 
( Lessing). 

In the conception of this author's ' Education of 
the Human Race,' culture — apart from special and 
technical — derives its matter as well as its forms (§ 6) 
from History. And indeed the fact that the great 
movements of History complete themselves in a small 
circle of typical formations, the greatest in a still 
smaller circle, makes it possible valuably to apply His- 
tory in a didactic way not only to the higher and 
even the highest needs, but also to the elementary. 

Are there forms of historical presentation for this 
purpose? Are Herder's presentations of Universal 
History, or Schlozer's, Johannes von Miiller's, Leo's, 
or von Ranke's, patterns for this kind of historical 
composition ? 

No one will measure the worth of the sermon in the 
Evangelical Church by printed sermons, still less desire 

1 Frederic the Great, (Euvres, IV, p. xvii : Cest un repertoire 
<Vid6es qui fournit de la matiere que le jugement doit passer an creuset 
pour IVpurer. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 55 

the enforcement of a canon securing for every Sunday 
a sermon according to a prescribed pattern. Rather 
should every sermon be a new witness to the living 
evangelical spirit in our Church ; and so far as the 
congregation is edified by them they are so. 

The correct form of didactic exposition is the his- 
torical instruction of youth. Particularly is this so 
where it is in the hands of a teacher who moves in the 
fields of History as master, with the highest possible 
freedom and independence as an investigator, and by 
communicating his instruction in ever new shapes and 
turns bears witness to the spirit that fills and bears on 
the life of History. 

§ 93. 

(d) ' Discussive exposition ' takes the total result of 
the investigation, gathers all its rays as in a concave 
mirror, and turns them upon some definite point of 
present interest, throwing light upon it thus in order 
to ' set it clear.' It may be some question to be decided, 
some pair of alternatives which is to yield a choice, or 
some new phenomenon the understanding of which is 
to be mastered. To everything new, not only political 
facts, but also fresh discoveries, recent efforts in art and 
science, etc., historical elucidation and comparison has 
to assign its place in the progressive course and sweep 
of human endeavor. We here refer to criticism, scien- 
tific, aesthetic, of the publicist, etc. 

The points to be established in any given discussion 
lie partly within the subject discussed, as that this 
nation, this power, this church, etc., has had, in virtue 
of its historical antecedents, such or such a character. 
For instance, the old i sint ut sunt aut non sint\ But 



56 .lolIANX GUSTAV DEOYSEN. 

also in outside matters simply conditioning and deter- 
mining the subject, and in fact in the whole congeries 
of events prevailing at any moment, the elements which 
give broad determination to its historical connection 
are to be found, interpreted and applied. 

The essence of theory is that it gathers from the 
shaping and elaborating process of investigation its net 
results, and imparts to them the form of a principle, a 
lawgiving conclusion, with, indeed, a legitimate claim 
to this character. The more the theory lias failed to 
sum up all the elements, the more one-sidedly it brings 
into prominence what lies nearest or is least active, 
the more doctrinaire it is. This appears in that the 
determinative element, which at any given time led to 
the further step, was, with its favoring nature, present 
and operative only for that case, under those circum- 
stances, for that end. 

Every State has its own politics, domestic as well as 
foreign. Discussion, even in the press, in the council 
of state, and in parliament, is reliable in proportion as 
it is historical ; ruinous in the degree in which it bases 
itself upon mere doctrines, or upon idols of the theater, 
forum, den and tribe. 

The practical significance of historical studies lies in 
the fact that they, and they alone, hold up before the 
State, or people, or army, its own picture. Especially is 
historical study the basis for political improvement and 
culture. The statesman is the historian in practice, 
' able to see into realities, and to do the things that are 
to be done.' 1 The State is, however, but the most 
complex among the organisms belonging to the moral 

1 QewprjTiKbs tQv 6vtuv ko! TrpaKTinos tQv dedvrwv. 



PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY. 57 

potencies. Every formation of the kind requires similar 
self-control through discussion. We may specify ec- 
clesiastical government, the conduct of industrial under- 
takings, the arrangement of a scientific expedition, and 
such things. 

§ 94. 

With the last named form of exposition our science 
indeed enters wide realms ; but it cannot forbear to 
affirm its authority also in these, in the same way as 
the natural sciences have no hesitation in proceeding to 
demonstrate their value wherever their methods show 
themselves applicable. Even the investigations and 
results of the natural sciences are not the work of 
abstract observation and experiment, as if they uttered 
no voice save that of the facts which have been observed 
and interrogated. It is the mighty total of repeated 
yet enlarging life-experiences displaying itself in the 
continuity of History ; it is this which first gives to the 
minds investigating in this field the elevation and 
compass of views and thoughts enabling them thus to 
observe and get things ready to be questioned, thus to 
combine and conclude. The same is true of the specu- 
lative sciences. For all growth in men's thinking and 
invention, in their creative activity, determination and 
efficiency, proceeds in respect to forms exclusively, and 
to a great extent in respect to materials, from these 
laboriously gotten results and repeated life experiences, 
to investigate whose continuity is the task of History. 

§95. 

Our science does not pretend that its method of 
investigation is the only scientific one (§ 14). It con- 



58 JOHANN GUSTAV DROYSEN. 

tents itself with being able in its expositions of results, 
to give only so much as its province and investigation 
enable it to get, only so much as its methods put within 
its powers. And the more questions there are in its 
various departments which it is conscious of being no 
longer or not yet able satisfactorily to answer, the more 
careful it will be about pretending that its result is 
greater than it legitimately is or can be. The aim of 
the historical expositor thus is to afford an idea elabor- 
ated in the most certain measure possible and developed 
in the closest possible accord with facts, of things which 
were present and actual, whether in recent, distant or 
most ancient times, though they now live and have a 
contemporary character only in the knowledge of men. 



APPENDICES. 



59 



I. — The Elevation of History to the Eank of 
a Science. 

BEING A REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION 
IN ENGLAND, 1 BY II. T. BUCKLE. 

Our age is fond of boasting that no preceding one 
equals it in the freedom and boldness with which it 
works or in the magnitude or the practical character of 
its results. True, and we must, without envy, give the 
prize to the natural sciences for what they accomplish 
toward this result, and for the way in which they 
accomplish it. 

The energy of these branches of learning comes from 
their having a completely clear consciousness of their 
problems, their means, their methods, and from the fact 
that they consider the things which they draw into the 
compass of their investigations under those points of 
view, and those only, upon which their method is based. 

A French investigator strikingly characterizes this 
field of studies in the following often cited words : 
' Whenever we can transfer one of the vital phenomena 
to the class of the physical, we have made a new con- 
quest in the sciences, whose realm is thereby so much 
enlarged. In such a case, facts take the place of words, 
analysis of hypothesis ; the laws of organic bodies fall 
together with those of inorganic, and like them become 
susceptible of explanation and simplification.' 

!Vol. I, ed. 2, London, 1858. Vol. II, 1861. 

61 



62 APPENDICES. 

But this judgment here appears in a universal form, 
whose legitimacy is more than questionable. Is it, 
indeed, true that a new conquest is made in science 
only when vital phenomena are transferred to the class 
of physical? Would that be, in fact, a correct defini- 
tion of the essence and scope of science? Should the 
other realms of human discovery be obliged to recognize 
themselves as of a scientific nature only in so far as 
they are in a condition to transfer vital phenomena to 
the class of physical phenomena? 

It is not alone the astonishing performance and 
results of work in natural science which spreads abroad 
the conviction that its method is in a preeminent meas- 
ure scientific, the only scientific one. The deeper' 
ground of popularity attaching to that way of looking 
at things whose counterpart is in the world of quanti- 
tative phenomena, lies in the mode of culture prevalent 
in our age, and in that stage of development at which 
we have arrived socially and politically. 

Buckle is not the first who has attempted to treat 
the unscientific character of History, the ' methodless 
matter,' 1 as an ancient writer names it, by the method 
of exhibiting vital phenomena under points of view 
analogous to those which are the starting-point of the 
exact sciences. But a notion which others have inci- 
dentally broached under some formula about ' natural 
growth,' or carried out in the very inadequate and 
merely figurative idea of the inorganic ; what still 
others, as Comte in his attractive '-Pkilosophie Posi- 
tive^ 1 have developed speculatively, Buckle undertakes 
to ground in a comprehensive historical exposition. 

1 d^6oSos v\r). See page 107. 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 63 

He speaks with sharp expressions of the 'guild of 
historians ' and their doings hitherto, of the poverty of 
thought under which they have labored, and the absence 
of principles in their investigations. He thinks that, 
working in their way, ' every bootmaker is fitted for a 
writer of history.' ' If, through indolence of thought 
or natural limitation he is not capable of handling the 
highest branches of knowledge, he needs only to apply 
a few years to the reading of a certain number of books, 
and he may write the history of a great people and 
attain consideration in his profession.' Mr. Buckle finds 
that 'as regards all higher tendencies of human think- 
ing, History still lies in deplorable incompleteness and 
presents so confused and anarchical an appearance as 
were to be expected only in case of a subject with 
unknown laws or destitute as yet even of a foundation.' 

He purposes to raise History to a science by showing 
how to demonstrate historical facts out of general laws. 
He paves the way for this by setting forth that the 
earliest and rudest conceptions touching the course of 
human destiny were those indicated by the ideas of 
chance and necessity, that ' in all probability ' out of 
these grew later the ' dogmas ' of free will and pre- 
destination, that both are in great degree ' mistakes,' or 
that, as he adds, ' we at least have no adequate proof of 
their truth.' He finds that all the changes of which 
History is full, all the vicissitudes which have come upon 
the human race, its advance and its decline, its happi- 
ness and its misery, must be the fruit of a double agency, 
the working of outer phenomena upon our nature and 
the working of our nature upon outer phenomena.' 
He has confidence that he has discovered the ' laws ' of 



04 APPENDICES. 

this double influence, and that he has therefore elevated 
the History of mankind to a science. 

Buckle sees the peculiar historical content of Hu- 
manity's life in that which he calls Civilization. He 
has traced the history of civilization among the English, 
French, Spanish, and Scotch, that he may illustrate by 
these examples the application of his method and the 
justification of the laws discovered by him. He arrives 
at these laws, as he says, in the two only possible ways, 
deduction and induction. He proceeds deductively in 
•showing how the historical development of civilization 
is explained by these laws, and inductively in that he 
gathers out of the multitudinous facts which he has 
collected in his studies the standard and important ones, 
and finds the higher expression that unites them. 

I will not attempt to criticise his induction and de- 
duction from the point of view of the historical material 
brought forward in substantiation of them. There 
might be in his manner of employing sources, in the 
choice of his statements, in the fitness of his combina- 
tions, a large and constant intermixture of error, caprice 
and inadequacy — as is actually the case — without 
lessening the scientific importance of the problem 
which he introduces to our science or of the method 
which he recommends for its solution. Buckle the his- 
torian would only have retired behind Buckle the 
philosopher, and it would remain for professional his- 
torians to exemplify and test the great discovery pre- 
sented by him better than the gifted dilettant in our 
studies could do. 

Von Sybel's Zeitschrift contained some time ago a few 
instructive essays upon Historical Method and the mode 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 65 

and reach of historical knowledge, showing also how 
guardedly History should deal with those questions 
which, never of a purely historical nature, must yet he 
treated and in her way solved by our science, unless she 
is willing to run the risk of having problems offered 
her, paths prescribed for her and definitions of science 
thrust upon her from a foreign source, to which she 
cannot agree without self-renunciation, without giving 
over that calling in the field of human knowledge which 
she and she alone can fulfil. 

The recognition will not he denied to historical stud- 
ies that even they have some part in the intellectual 
movement of our age, that they are active in discovering 
the new, in investigating anew what has been transmit- 
ted, and in presenting results in appropriate forms. But 
when asked their scientific justification and their rela- 
tion to the other circles of human knowledge, when 
asked what is the foundation of their procedure, what 
the connection of their means and their problems, they 
are up to date in no condition to give satisfactory in- 
formation. However earnestly and thoroughly individ- 
ual members of our 'guild' may have thought through 
these questions, our science has not yet set its theory 
and system on a firm footing. Meantime we console 
ourselves with the thought that it is not only a science 
but also an art, and perhaps — at least according to the 
judgment of the public — an art more than a science. 

We in Germany have slight ground to ignore the 
high importance of advanced technique in our studies, 
of our increasing practice and certitude in historical 
criticism, or of the results which have been reached 
through these means. The quest which concerns us 



66 APPENDICES. 

here is another. A work like Buckle's is well adapted 
to remind us how very unclear, contradictory and beset 
with arbitrary opinions the foundations of our science 
are. And the deep impression which the work has 
made not 011I3* upon the numerous lovers of each newest 
paradox, be it table-rapping, phalanstery, or the olive 
leaf of the friends of peace, but also on many younger 
adherents of historical studies, may well be a warning 
to us at last to seek after the foundation of our science 
too, in certitude about which the natural sciences since 
Bacon — unless he is for other reasons undeserving of 
place at the head of the development — are in advance 
of us. 

Now is it Buckle's merit to have achieved his pur- 
pose ? Can he have developed the true meaning and 
idea of the historical branches of learning or fixed the 
extent of their application? Is he the Bacon of the 
historical sciences and his work the Organon to teach 
us to think historically? Has the method which he 
propounds power to remove from the realms of histori- 
cal knowledge the idols of the den, forum, theatre, and 
so on, which even to-day obscure our sight in the form 
of the l errors ', as he calls them, of free-will and divine 
providence, the over-valuation of the moral principle in 
relation to the intellectual, and the like ? And if he is 
really right in appealing for the most interesting of his 
fundamental propositions, that touching free-will, to our 
Kant, who, like Buckle himself, as Buckle thinks, 
regarded 'the reality of free-will in the world of phe- 
nomena as an untenable assumption,' can he claim pri- 
ority in the discovery just made in Germany with such 
lively acclaim, that Kant's teaching is precisely the re- 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 67 

verse of what has hitherto been supposed, and that the 
result of Kant's two Critiques is that both are false? 

Buckle's translator adverts to the fact that up to the 
present time the Kantian philosophy has been the ex- 
treme limit to which English thinkers have ventured. 
He calls Buckle's philosophy -incomplete thinking, in 
which crude criticism passes as philosophy,' and charges 
upon his author, in spite of the Vedas and of Cousin 
and Kant, the only non-English authorities he quotes, 
' a truly antique consciousness touching all proper 
thought.' When, however, he greets the laws found by 
Buckle k as a splendid and entirely truthful program of 
the progress of the human mind,' and speaks of the 
reformer's role which the work is to play even in Ger- 
many, the utterances badly embarrass us. Must we, an 
' antistrophe ' as it were to our former statement, admit 
that a large element of error, inadequacy and antique- 
ness runs right through Buckle's philosophical buttress- 
ing of his theory, yet does not lessen the reformatory 
significance of his work, this being injured as little by 
the philosophical as by the historical dilettantism of 
the author? 

Perhaps, free from the scholastic ' anticipations ' of 
both these two departments, and so able to canvass the 
more impartially the question of the nature and laws 
of History, Buckle can point out the way, so clear 
to every sound human understanding, by which History 
is to be raised to the rank of a science. He repeatedly 
confesses that he wishes to observe and argue entirely 
and only as an empiricist. At least the great and simple 
outlines of the empirical procedure, provided vision 
is not obscured by prepossessions, appear plain to the 



68 APPENDICES. 

so-called sound human understanding without explana- 
tion. Such an understanding is precisely what the 
English mean when they dub ' philosophical ' those 
natural sciences whose laurels do not permit our inves- 
tigators to rest. Buckle hopes, he says, 'to accomplish 
for the History of mankind that or something similar 
to that which other investigators have achieved in the 
natural sciences, where occurrences apparently the most 
irregular and contradictory have been explained and 
proved to accord with certain unchangeable and general 
laws. If we subject the processes of the human world 
to a similar treatment, we certainly have every prospect 
of a similar result.' 

It is of interest to notice the quid pro quo from which 
Buckle starts out. Can any one ' who believes in the 
possibility of a science of History,' as he himself does 
and as he is certain that by applying the method of 
natural science he has established the propriety of 
doing, fail to notice that this method does not so much 
raise History to a science by itself as it places it among 
the natural sciences ? Other sciences, too, such as 
theology and philosophy, at the times when their 
methods passed for the only scientific ones, believed 
that they were entitled to take History and nature 
under their jurisdiction, but neither the knowledge of 
Nature nor that of History was thereby advanced in the 
measure intended by those interested in orthodoxy or 
speculation. Is there, then, never more than one way, 
one method of knowledge ? Do not its methods in- 
cessantly vary according to their objects, like the organs 
of sense with the different forms of sensuous perception, 
and like organs in general with their diverse functions? 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 69 

• Whoever believes in the possibility of a science of 
History,' thinking logically and according to the nature 
of the matter in hand, as we do in Germany, would 
certainly never undertake to show us the justness of 
this belief by pretending that one can smell with the 
hands as well as touch, digest with the feet, see tones 
and hear colors. To be sure, the vibrations of a string 
which the ear perceives as a deep tone can also be seen 
by the eye ; but the property of these vibrations en- 
abling them to be perceived as tone does not exist for 
the eye. It is a fact solely for the ear and for its 
peculiar method of perception. It is true that in the 
departments with which the 'science of History' has to 
do, there is much which is level and accessible to natural- 
scientific method also, as well as to various other forms 
of scientific knowledge. But since phenomena, how- 
ever many or few, since points of view and relations 
remain which are accessible to none of the other kinds 
of knowledge, it is clear that there must be for them 
another method, special and particular. If there is to 
be a 'science of History,' in which we too believe, this 
means that there exists a circle of phenomena for which 
neither the theological, the philosophical, the mathe- 
matical nor the physical manner of consideration is 
adapted, that there are questions to which speculation 
gives no answer, whether, theologically, it have the 
absolute for its point of departure, or, philosophically, 
take it for its goal ; which are equally unanswered by 
that empiricism which apprehends the world of phe- 
nomena by its quantitative procedure, and by any disci- 
pline pertaining to the practical departments of the 
moral world. 



70 APPENDICES. 

Our founder of the science of History approaches his 
task with enviable naivete. He considers it unnecessary 
to investigate the ideas with which he intends to work, 
or to limit off the department in which his laws find 
their application. What science is lie thinks every one 
knows, and the same of History. Not quite, after all, 
for he takes particular pains to state what it is not. 
He cites with hearty assent Comte, Philosophie Positive, 
V. p. 18, who remarks with displeasure that 'it is 
entirely inappropriate to characterize as History the 
piling- up of disconnected facts.' How memorable is 
this sentence of the French thinker, and how instructive 
it is that the Englishman appropriates it to himself ! 
We of course designate as ' History ' that infinite suc- 
cession of objective facts in which we see the life of 
men, of nations, of humanity going on, just as we em- 
brace the totality of another kind of phenomena under 
the name of ' Nature.' But pray has anyone ever 
thought that a. collection of dried plants constituted 
Botany, or a lot of stuffed or unstuffed animal skins 
Zoology ? Did anyone ever suppose it even possible to 
collect and pile together, whether in an orderly or in a 
disorderly way, purely objective facts, such as battles, 
revolutions, business crises, foundings of cities, and the 
like ? Has ; the guild of historians ' actually not yet 
made the observation that objective facts are a different 
thing from the manner in which we know them ? 

If Buckle really wished to kindle a light for us his- 
torians groping in the dark, he should first of all have 
made it clear to himself and to us how and with what 
right k History ' has been able to fix itself as name for 
a definite series of phenomena, as L Nature ' lias sue- 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 71 

ceecled in making itself the name of another definite 
series of manifestations. He should have shown what 
it means that the wonderful abridger, the human spirit, 
apprehends spatial manifestations as Nature and tempo- 
ral occurrences as History ; not because they are so and 
so distinguished objectively, but in order to be able to 
grasp and think them. He would then have known 
the nature of the material with which a 'science of 
History ' can have to do. If he had been aware what 
it means to have been an empiricist, he would not have 
omitted to investigate, as the nature of all empiricism 
demands, the manner in which these materials of histor- 
ical investigation lie before us and our sense-perception 
at the present time. Then surely he would have had 
to recognize that not past events, not the infinite confu- 
sion of ' facts ' which constituted them, now lie before us 
as materials for investigation ; that instead these facts 
vanished forever with the moment to which they be- 
longed, and that, as human, we possess only the present, 
the here and now, with the impulse and ability, of 
course, by learning, insight, and will, to develop im- 
measurably this ephemeral point. He would have seen 
that among the processes peculiar to the realm of the 
spirit, one of the most remarkable is that which makes 
it possible for us again to awaken to present reality 
events which are forever past and now lie behind us, 
and to make them live in our minds, that is, to all 
human intents and purposes, make them eternal. 

If Buckle had wished to raise us and himself above 
his thoughtless use of the word ' History,' with the 
anticipations which arise out of this and dim our vision, 
he would have had to take us on into a second line of 



72 APPENDICES. 

considerations. In occasional intimations of liis we 
ascertain that History has to do with the ' actions of 
men,' that it is connected ' with the unsatisfied desire 
for knowledge which characterizes our fellowmen'; 
but he omits to tell us in what manner these actions of 
men are of an historical nature, and leaves us in the 
dark touching the character of the questions for which 
the curiosity displayed by our fellowmen seeks answer. 

It does not require deep penetration to see that the 
human acts which are now historical, at the moment 
when they happened and in the minds of those through 
whom and for whom they happened, had only in the 
rarest instances the purpose or determination to be 
historical deeds. The general who gives battle, the 
statesman who negotiates a treaty, has quite enough to 
do to attain the practical end which concerns him at 
the moment. So on down to the minute and even the 
minutest ' acts of men ' : they all fulfil themselves in 
that illimitably manifold interplay of interests, conflicts, 
businesses, of motives, passions, forces and restrictions, 
the sum of which has been well named the moral world. 
We may consider these under very various points of 
view, practical, technical, legal, social, etc. One of the 
ways in which the moral world may be surveyed is 
the historical. 

I decline to set forth the full bearing of these 
observations. The attentive reader will see that, were 
this done, it would become clear how History (6re- 
sehiehte) emerges, so to speak, out of men's doings 
(Geseliaften). We should also thus learn of what 
sort and nature that knowledge is which is based 
on such materials and applicable in such a realm ; 



THE ELEVATION OE HISTOBY. 73 

what it can and cannot do ; what kind of certainty 
it is in condition to give, and what kind of truth it 
is calculated to ascertain. 

Buckle has the goodness to recognize that belief in 
the value of History is widely extended, and that his- 
torical material has been collected which on the whole 
enjoys and commands profound attention and respect. 
He depicts in broad outlines what a mass of investiga- 
tions and discoveries has been already made in the field 
of History. But, he adds, w if we were to tell how 
little this material has been utilized, we should have to 
sketch quite another picture.' How little it has been 
utilized ! Must everything therein be explored before 
any body of facts is a science ? Is the astonishing 
depth of mathematical knowledge scientific only because 
the surveyor or the mechanician can use one or two 
propositions from it? When the prophets, to warn and 
punish the Israelites, held before them the image of 
themselves, how different was the result from what 
followed when they pointed out how the God of their 
fathers had testified to them k all the way from Egypt.' 
When Thucydides wrote his History with its ' perpetual 
value ' (KTrnxa eis dei), ought he to have meant by this 
proud phrase the artistic form in which he wrote and 
not the historical drama of which he wrote ? Buckle's 
reproachful question forgets that the work of the 
centuries is the entail of each new generation. In 
what else does the civilization so highly extolled by 
himself consist but in the summed up work of those 
who were before us? All past events, the whole of 
' History,' is ideally contained in the present and in 
that which the present possesses. And when we bring 



74 APPENDICES. 

to our consciousness this ideal content of History ; when 
we represent to ourselves in a kind of narrative form 
how that which is has come to pass, what else do we 
thus do but employ History in understanding that which 
is, the elements in which we move as thinking, volitional 
and active beings ? This is the way, or at least one of 
the ways, immeasurably to extend, enrich and elevate 
the needy and lonesome Here and Now of our ephemeral 
existence. In proportion as we, — I mean the working 
races of men — ascend higher, the horizon which we 
survey is extended, and with every new point of view 
each particular element thereof displays itself to us in 
new perspectives, in new and wider relations. The 
width of our horizon is almost exactly the measure of 
the height reached by us ; and in the same measure has 
the circle of the resources, conditions, and tasks of our 
existence extended. History gives us the consciousness 
of what we are and have. 

Here is a connection of thought, it is worth while 
to notice, whence one may see what culture is and 
what it means to us. Goethe says : ' What thou 
hast inherited from thy ancestors, earn in order to 
possess it.' We rind here the justification of this 
obscure utterance. However high may be the position 
of the age or of the nation into which we individuals 
are born, however great or full the inheritance accruing 
to our advantage without our cooperation, so long as 
we have not gained it through our own efforts and have 
not recognized it as that which it is, the result of in- 
cessant toil on the part of those who were before us, 
we hold it as if we had it not. Now culture means 
that we have lived and toiled through over again, as a 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 75 

continuation, that which has, in the History of times, 
peoples and humanity, been wrought out in men's spirit 
in the way of thought. Civilization is satisfied only 
with the results of culture. Amid utmost fullness of 
mere wealth, it is poor, blase with opulence of enjoyment. 

After Buckle has complained how little the rich and 
ever-growing ' mass of facts ' has hitherto been utilized, 
he assigns as a reason explaining this phenomenon a 
' peculiarly unfortunate circumstance.' ' In all the 
other great departments of investigation,' he says, 'the 
necessity of generalization is admitted by every one, 
and we meet with noble exertions, based on specific 
facts, to reveal the laws under whose rule the facts 
stand. Historians on the contrary are so far from 
making this procedure their own as to be dominated by 
the strange thought that their business is solely to 
recount transactions, enlivening these at the utmost 
with appropriate moral and political remarks.' 

A certain patience is necessary to follow these repe- 
titious trivialities and this confusion of ideas which 
chase each other around in a circle. Generalizations 
then are the laws which Buckle seeks. He thinks it 
possible in the way of generalization to find the laws 
which shall reveal, that is, determine with necessity, 
the phenomena of the moral world. Then are the rules 
of a language linguistic laws ? To be sure, induction 
sums up particulars into the general fact ; not, however, 
simply by arriving at a generality hap-hazard, but 
by combining particulars in that which is really 
common to them. But to proceed from the rule to the 
law, to find the ground for the general phenomenon, 
there is need of analytical procedure. Buckle does 



76 APPENDICES. 

not consider it necessary to give himself and ns any 
account of the logic of his investigation. He satisfies 
himself with setting aside a ' preliminary hindrance " 
which seems to block his way. ' It is supposed,' says 
he, 'that there is in human things something provi- 
dential and mysterious, which makes them impervious 
to our investigation and will conceal from ns forever 
their future course.' He meets this difficulty with the 
' simple ' alternative : ' Are the acts of men and 
hence also of society subject to definite laws, or are 
they the result either of accident or of supernatural 
influence ? ' Certainly : if this cloud is not a camel, 
it is either a weasel or a whale. 

We have already remarked that if there is to be a 
science of History, this must have its own method of dis- 
covery and relate to its own department of knowledge. 
If in other fields induction or deduction has rendered 
excellent results, it does not follow that the science of 
History must employ exclusively the one or.the other of 
those methods. Fortunately there are between heaven 
and earth things related as irrationally to deduction as 
to induction ; which demand deduction and synthesis 
along with induction and analytical treatment ; which 
are grasped by being subjected alternately to both 
procedures ; which even then are not entirely compre- 
hended, but more and more, not exhaustively but ap- 
proximately and in a certain way ; things which demand 
not to be 'developed' or 'explained' but understood. 

The 'desire for knowledge which characterizes our 
fellow men ' is ' insatiable ' because whatever it brings 
to us is rationally comprehensible, and because with our 
growing understanding of man and of what exists and 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 77 

develops in ;i human fashion, that which is most truly 
our own becomes wider, deeper, freer, indeed only then 
becomes ours. Certain as it is that Ave human beings 
also weave our lives into the general mutation of matter, 
and correct as it may be that every individual tempora- 
rily comprises and has for his form of existence only 
just such and such atoms out of 'eternal matter,' 
equally and in fact iniinitely more certain is it that by 
means of these ' fleeting formations ' and their forces, 
so vital after all, something quite unique and incompar- 
able has sprung up and is still springing up, a second 
creation, not of new materials but of forms, of thoughts, 
of societies with their virtues and duties, in a word, the 
Moral World. 

In this realm of the moral world everything is acces- 
sible to our understanding, from the most insignificant 
love-story to great state transactions, from the solitary 
mental work of the poet or the thinker to the im- 
measurable combinations of the world's commerce, or 
poverty's struggle so beset with temptation. What- 
ever exists we may understand, inasmuch as we can 
apprehend it as something that has developed from 
beginnings. 

It has already been mentioned that Buckle does not 
so much leave the freedom of the will, in connection 
with divine providence, out of view, but rather declares 
it an illusion and throws it overboard. Within the pre- 
cincts of philosophy also something similar has recently 
been taught. A thinker whom I regard with personal 
esteem says : ' If we call all that an individual man is, 
has and performs A, then this A arises out of a -\- x, 
a embracing all that comes to the man from his outer 



78 APPENDICES. 

circumstances : from his country, people, age, etc., while 
the vanishingly little x is his own contribution, the 
work of his free will.' However vanishingly small this 
:/• may he, it is of infinite value. Morally and humanly 
considered it alone has value. The colors, the brush, 
the canvas which Raphael used were of materials which 
he had not created. He had learned from one and 
another master to apply these materials in drawing and 
painting. The idea of the Holy Virgin and of the 
saints and angels, he met with in church tradition. 
Various cloisters ordered pictures from him at given 
prices. That this incitement alone, these material and 
technical conditions and such traditions and contem- 
plations, should 'explain' the Sistine Madonna, would 
be, in the formula A = a + x, the service of the vanish- 
ingly little x. Similarly everywhere. Let statistics go 
on showing that in a certain country so and so many 
illegitimate births occur. Suppose that in the formula 
A = a + x this a includes all the elements which ' ex- 
plain ' the fact that among a thousand mothers twenty, 
thirty, or whatever the number is, are unmarried; each 
individual case of the kind has its history, how often a 
touching and affecting one. Of those twenty or thirty 
who have fallen is there a single one who will be con- 
soled by knowing that the statistical law ' explains ' 
her case ? Amid the tortures of conscience through 
nights of weeping, many a one of them will be profoundly 
convinced that in the formula .1 = a -j- x the vanishingly 
little x is of immeasurable weight, that in fact it em- 
braces the entire moral worth of the human being, his 
total and exclusive value. 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 79 

No intelligent man will think of denying that the 
statistical method of considering human affairs has its 
great worth; but we must not forget how little, rela- 
tively, it can accomplish and is meant to accomplish. 
Many and perhaps all human relations have a legal 
side; yet no one will on that account hid us seek for 
the understanding of the Eroica 1 or of Faust among 
jurists' definitions concerning intellectual property. 

I will- not follow Buckle in his further discussions 
touching the 'laws of nature,' 'mental laws,' the 
superiority of the intellectual over the moral forces, 
and so on. The essence of his views in the first part 
he sums up at the beginning of the second, in the 
following four 'generic thoughts,' which pass accord- 
ing to him for the foundations of a History of Civiliza- 
tion. '1. The progress of the human race depends 
upon the effect with which the laws of phenomena are 
investigated and the extent to which the results of 
these investigations are made known. 2. Before such 
an investigation can begin, a spirit of scepticism must 
be awakened, which then in turn furthers investigation 
and is furthered by it. 3. The discoveries made in 
this manner strengthen the influence of intellectual 
truths and weaken relatively, though not absolutely, 
the influence of moral truths, the latter being in conse- 
quence less subject to growth and development than 
the intellectual truths. 4. The chief enemy of this 
movement and hence the chief enemy of civilization is 
the paternal or guardianship spirit, the idea, namely, 
that human society can not prosper unless its affairs 

1 The Sinfonia Eroica, of Beethoven. See Grove, Beethoven's Nine 
Symphonies. — TV. 



80 APPENDICES. 

are watched over and protected at every step by State 
and Church, the State teaching men what to do, the 
( Ihurch what to believe.' 

If these are the laws in which 'the study of the 
History of humanity' is to attain scientific elevation, 
then the happy discoverer is truly an object of envy in 
the naivete with which he succeeds in deceiving him- 
self even for a single moment as to their extraordinary 
shallowness. Laws of this sort could be discovered 
daily by the dozen, in the self-same way of generaliza- 
tion, laws none of which would in depth and fruitful- 
ness be inferior to the well known saying that the 
measure of a people's civilization is its consumption 
of soap. 

Bacon somewhere says that ' truth emerges more 
readily from error than from confusion.' 1 The con- 
fusion of which Buckle is guilty is obvious. Because 
he neglected to examine and sound the nature of the 
subjects with which he undertook to deal, he proceeds 
Avith them as if they did not have any nature or char- 
acter of their own at all and so did not need a method 
of their own; and the method which he does apply in 
this department so foreign to it, avenges itself by 
making him put up with commonplaces instead of the 
calculable formulas in which it elsewhere expresses its 
laws : commonplaces which may have a certain pro- 
priety for to-day and yesterday, but which, in face 
of History's milleniums, in face of the great social 
formations of the middle age, of beginning Chris- 
tianity, and of the Greek and Roman world, appear 
entirely unmeaning. 

1 ('Wins, emergit Veritas ex errore quam ex confusione. 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 81 

If Buckle recognizes the great work of the human 
race in History, how could he help asking himself the 
nature of this work, out of what material and for what 
ends it has originated, and how the workers are related 
to it ? Had he done this he would — for it is worth 
while to pause a moment over these questions — have 
recognized that historical work embraces, in respect to 
its material, both natural data and historical growths, 
and that each constitutes for it at once a means and a 
limitation, at once condition and impulse. He would 
have noticed that in this department the method of 
quantitative phenomena has of course a certain appli- 
cability, and that where we have to do with the great 
factors of bodily existence, of natural conditions, of 
statistical results, our branch of learning will accompany 
the labors of exact science with the greatest interest 
and accept its splendid products with pleasure and 
gratitude. But if Buckle had been mindful of the 
further questions referred to, he would have saved him- 
self from thinking that the conclusions arrived at in 
that department — the laws ascertained, as he thinks, 
in the way of generalization — are the sum of History 
and ' raise History to the rank of a science ' by ' ex- 
plaining ' its phenomena. This explains them as little 
as the beautiful statue of The Praying Boy J is explained 
by the bronze out of which it was poured, the clay 
which formed the model of it, or the fire which melted 
the metal. The idea of the image that was to be 
(to ti" rjv etvat) was necessary, as ' the master of those 
who know' long ago taught, and this was in the 

1 In the Old Museum, Berlin. It is believed to be from an original 
of the time of Lysippus. Frederic the Great purchased it for 10.000 
Thaler [$7,500]. — Tr. 



82 APPENDICES. 

artist's soul before the work in which it was to be 
realized existed. There was need also of the purpose 
which the statue should fulfil, perhaps a vow to the 
rescuing god whose temple it was to adorn. The skilful 
hand, too, was required, to put together the motive, 
the thought-image and the material into the completed 
work. Doubtless the bronze as well was necessary in 
order to the origination of The Praying Boy ; yet it 
would take a mean civilization to appraise this wonder- 
ful work of art only at the value of the metal in it, as 
Buckle does Avith History. 

Buckle proceeds not a whit less one-sidedly than 
those people — how severely he censures them ! — who 
explain History solely from the motive which theology, 
for instance, ascribes to it, or the religious spirit sur- 
mises as dominant in it ; or those who see and observe 
in respect to any work only the deft [gescJdckt~\ agents 
which perform it, just as if the fates [ Greschicke] did 
not take their course in spite of the good or evil will 
of the people through whom they are put in execution ; 1 
or those who, always on hand with their ready-made 
static ideas and doctrines about things which are con- 
tinually developing and thus criticising themselves, 
always just know and know better than any one else 
how the State, the Church, the social order, etc., ought 
to have been obliged to exist and develop. Each of 
these ways of viewing things is in itself partial, untrue, 
destructive, even though each is in a sense justified 
and necessary. ' Everything,' teaches the ancient 
philosopher just referred to, ' everything which subsists 

1 The author intended a play upon the two words in the brackets, 
but in using them confuses rather than clarifies his meaning. — Tr. 



THE ELEVATION OP HISTORY. 83 

by the agency of a cause, and is not, like the divinity, 
self-subsistent,' contains those four elements, 1 no one 
of which alone and by itself can explain the whole. 
More precisely, it is according to those four elements 
that we mentally analyze anything for ourselves, for 
our contemplation, conscious that in the reality which 
we wish to consider they are at the same time com- 
pletely one with and permeated by each other. We 
thus separate and distinguish, although aware that the 
process is only an aid to our re-constructive under- 
standing, while certain other activities of our soul give 
and receive totalities instantly and immediately. 

Pardon these very elementary observations. In view 
of Buckle's confused procedure they could not have 
been avoided if the questions involved were to be 
gotten onto a safer track. 

We see that in History the material upon which it 
works is not the only thing to be considered. Close to 
the material comes the form. In its varying forms 
History has a ceaseless and ever progressive life. These 
forms are the moral partnerships in which we become 
bodily and spiritually what we are, and by virtue of 
which we raise ourselves above the miserable desolation 
and indigence of our atomic egoism, giving and receiv- 
ing in order thus to become the richer the more we 
bind and obligate ourselves. These are departments in 
which laws of an entirely different nature and energy 
from those which the new science seeks, have their 
place and exercise their power. These moral forces, 

1 Referred to on pages 81, 82, viz., the material, the form, the 
moving cause, and the end or final cause. The thought is from 
Aristotle. — Tr. ' 



8 1 APPENDICES. 

as they have been finely termed, are to a great degree 
at once factors and products of the historical life. 
Ceaselessly developing, they, by what they have at 
any time come to be, determine who shall be there- 
after the bearers of their completed products, and 
raise them above themselves. In the community of 
the family, the State, the nation, etc., the individual 
has lifted himself above the narrow boundary of his 
ephemeral ego, in order, if I may so speak, to think 
and act as prompted by the ego of the family, the 
nation, and the State. In this elevation and undis- 
turbed participation in the activity of the moral forces, 
according to each man's character and duty, not in the 
unlimited and boundless independence of the indi- 
vidual, lies the true essence of freedom. Without the 
moral forces it is nothing ; it is immoral, a mere power 
of movement. 

Of these moral forces Buckle certainly holds a very 
low opinion. In Church and State he sees nothing but 
guardianship and" encroachments. To him right and 
law are only barriers and impediments. The con- 
sequence of his manner of view would be not so much 
to refer the child to the care and love of its parents and 
the discipline and guidance of its teachers, as rather 
to consider it by and for itself a manifestation of sover- 
eign liberty. 

Buckle arrives at Such an extraordinarily crude idea 
of liberty because he neglects proper attention to the 
agents engaged in working out History's task ; because 
he thinks only of the massed capital known as civili- 
zation, not of the ever new acquisition which forms the 
essence of culture. Moreover, he does not or will not 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 85 

see that in that vanishingly little x lies the whole and 
the only worth of personality, a worth which is not 
measured 1 >y the circumference of the sphere in which it 
works, or by splendor of results, but by the fidelity with 
which a man administers the interests intrusted to him. 

In these departments, again, there are laws having 
an entirely different power and inexorableness from that 
of those gotten at by generalization. Here validity 
attaches to duty, virtue, choice in the tragic conflicts 
of the moral forces, in those collisions of duties which 
are solved only through the power of free-will, and in 
which sometimes freedom can be saved only by death. 
Or are these things, too, set aside when 'the dogma of 
free-will' is explained as an illusion? 

Buckle does not, to be sure, go so far as to reject 
that dogma of free-will because of any assumption of 
its resting on the proposition that there is such a thing 
as spirit or soul, and that this is a petitio principii. He 
does not conclude with those who explain all these 
imponderables, like understanding, conscience, will, etc., 
as involuntary functions of the brain, as secretions of 
I know not what gray or white matter. Before we 
believe this the great minds who thus teach must dis- 
arm the suspicion that these doctrines of theirs are in 
fact the secretions of their brains, and morbid secretions 
at that. But while Buckle's argument against the 
presence in us of free-will is based mainly upon our 
'uncertainty regarding the existence of self-conscious- 
ness,' he must either permit us to consider his own 
argument, founded upon such uncertainty, as uncertain, 
or else prove that he can argue without the existence 
of self-consciousness, that is, of a thinking ego, and 



SO APPENDICES. 

that he has as a thought-automaton, destitute of self- 
consciousness, composed the work by which he intends 
to elevate History to the rank of a science. Nay, not 
'intended,' for he denies the will along with its free- 
dom. But some being or other must have thrown into 
this thinking-mill a lot of facts piled together in some 
way or other. The mill ground the grist, and the 
result, ' a swindling, tricky, subtle sophism entire,' ! 
thus ground out, became the new science of History. 

In spite of all this Buckle recognizes the ' progress ' 
in History, and is unwearied in describing it as what is 
most truly characteristic in the life of man. This is 
certainly very thankworthy, but it does not accord with 
the main trend of his views, nor is the thought con- 
sistently carried out. If there is progress, the direction 
of the movement must be observed, and make itself 
visible to him for whose sake it exists. The method 
of study belonging to natural science is in a different 
position from this in respect to the point of view under 
which it apprehends phenomena. The changes which 
it observes it traces up to the equivalents of forces, and 
it sees in them only the permutations of equals and 
constants. Vital phenomena interest it only in so far 
as they repeat themselves, either periodically or mor- 
phologically. In the individual being it sees and seeks 
only the idea of the species or the medium of material 
change. Since according to its method it excludes 
the idea of progress, — Darwin's theory of development 
is the strongest proof of this, — progress not in its 

1 o-6<pi<r/j.a, Kvp/xa, TpLfifxa, TranrdX-qti 6\ov. The quotation is from 
Aristophanes, Birds, 430, 431, where these epithets are applied to a 
person. — TV. 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 87 

knowledge, but as an element in that which it wishes 
to know, it has neither place nor expression for the 
idea of purpose, but leaves it out of account, partly 
degrading it to utility, thus leaving open Lessing's old 
question, ' what then is the utility of utility ? ' and 
partly waiving it, under forms such as the eternity of 
matter, evolution, etc., as a problem for other methods. 
In adducing the idea of progress as a fact of the his- 
torical world, Buckle falls into a paralogism of a very 
striking kind. He might confess that historical in- 
vestigation has not brought him to the primum mobile, 
that by the nature of empirical methods it is unattain- 
able in this way, and that it cannot even be adequately 
expressed by the speech of science with its conceptions 
and way of thinking; but does this justify the con- 
clusion that a primum mobile does not exist save as a 
piece of our error? Are there not various other forms 
of knowledge, other methods, competent, perhaps, in 
virtue of their nature to treat precisely the realities 
which the forms and methods of natural science decline 
and decline as a logical consequence of their point of 
view, and which the historical also either decline or 
treat inadequately? To illustrate, would there be no 
such thing as an aesthetic judgment because no such 
could be arrived at by jurists' procedure, or no legal 
proposition because such was sought in vain aestheti- 
cally? One who maintains that progress marks the 
historical world may lament that only a part of this 
movement peculiar to humanity is open to our view, 
and that we cannot descry the cause or the goal thereof, 
but only the fact. But will he be satisfied, and can he 
satisfy that deepest need of the spirit to perceive and 



88 APPEJSTDICES. 

know itself as a totality, by the circumstance that one 
form of empiricism shows him a riddle which anotker 
does not solve? After recognizing that a problem, a 
riddle, exists, will he declare it non-existent because he 
cannot solve it, and cannot solve it because while the 
enigma, resides in the sense of it he wishes to see it 
solved as a charade, as a word-catch, or as a syllable or 
letter riddle? Because from the one standpoint of 
scientific knowledge a certain side of the total being 
and the universal life, namely, the metaphysical side, 
is invisible, being situated, by the old play upon the 
word, ' behind ' the physical ; and because from the 
standpoint of a knowledge differing from this the e} r e 
just grazes metaphysics a little as in perspective, must 
Ave conclude that this third side has no existence 
except as an illusion of ours? If we cannot take hold 
of light with the hands, or hear it with the ears, does 
it therefore not exist ? Is not the fact rather that the 
eye is made sensitive to the sun's rays in order that by 
apprehending the light it may make perceptible to us 
what we can not seize with the hands or hear with the 
ears? 

I pursue these questions no further, since they lie 
beyond the circle of thoughts in which Buckle's effort 
to found a scientific doctrine of History moves. The 
hints given will suffice to show that he has not ap- 
proached the task which he proposed in the way that 
was necessary in order to advance it, that he appreciates 
neither its compass nor its dignity. And yet his task has, 
as it seems to me, outside of its particular significance 
for our studies, another which is more general, and on 
that account begins to engage the attention of the 



THE ELEVATION OF HISTORY. 89 

scientific world. This problem appears destined to 
become the middle point of the great discussion which 
will mark the next important turn in the entire life of 
the sciences. No one can consider the growing estrange- 

o o o 

ment between the exact and the speculative disciplines, 
the dissidence between the materialistic and the super- 
natural view of the world which gapes wider day by 
day, to be normal and true. These opposing contentions 
demand reconciliation, and this must be worked out in 
connection with Buckle's task. For the ethical world, 
the world of History, which is the problem of that task, 
takes part in both spheres, and it shows by every phase 
of human existence and action that that contrast is no 
absolute one. It is the peculiar grace of human nature, 
so happily incomplete, that its ethical doings must be 
at once spiritual and corporeal. Nothing human but 
has place in this dissension, but lives this double life. 
The opposition is reconciled each moment in order to 
its renewal, renewed in order to its reconciliation. To 
wish to understand the ethical or historical world is to 
recognize first of all that it is not an apparition and 
does not consist of a mere mutation in matter. Scien- 
tifically to transcend the false alternative between moral 
and material, to reconcile the dualism of those methods 
and those views of the world, each of which insists 
upon ruling or denying the other, to reconcile them in 
that method which applies to the ethical and historical 
world, to develop them into the view of the world 
which has its basis in the truth of human existence and 
in the cosmos of the moral forces — that, it seems to 
me, is the kernel of the problem with whose solution 
we are concerned. 



90 APPENDICES. 



II.— NATUKE AND HISTORY. 

It is a traditional habit to apply the expression 
' History ' also to nature. We speak of ' Natural His- 
tory,' of the 'History' of development in organic 
existences, of the 'History' of the globe, and so on. 
What else was the Okenian theory, what else is the 
Darwinian theory, but emphasizing the historical ele- 
ment, if we please so to call it, in the realm of organic 
nature ? 

Efforts are not wanting to treat History according to 
the laws which have been ascertained for nature, or at 
least according to the method built up for the natural 
sciences, and to establish even for the historical world 
the doctrine that to refer vital phenomena to physical 
laws is nothing less than a new conquest for science. 
Forms and movement in the sphere of the historical life 
have been characterized as 'organic developments/ and 
their laws given basis by means of statistical calculation. 
It has become customary to speak of ' natural growth ' 
in connection with these departments, the phrase being 
even deemed a very special improvement. 

To our science as to every other belongs the duty 
and the right to investigate and settle the conceptions 
with which it has to do. If it were to borrow these 
from the results of other sciences, it would be obliged 
to accommodate and subordinate itself to modes of view 
over which it has no control, perhaps to those by which 
it sees its own independence and right to exist called 
in question. It would thence perhaps receive defi- 
nitions of the word ' science,' to which it would be 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 91 

obliged to object. The circle of conceptions belonging 
to it our science Avill have to seek for itself, in its own, 
that is, in an empirical manner. It will be permitted 
to attempt this because its method is the method of 
understanding. It proposes to understand terms which 
language and usage in language daily employ and offer 
for it to practice upon. 

We find in our language the words 'nature' and 
'history.' What is meant by 'history?' Every one 
will agree that the idea of a course of time, of the 
temporal, instantly connects itself with the word when- 
ever heard. Of eternal, that is of timeless things, so 
far as we can grasp ideas of this kind, there is no 
history. They appear to us as historical only so far as 
they enter into the temporal, be it through revelation, 
or in their effects, or in the belief which finite minds, 
minds standing under the conditions of the temporal, 
have respecting them. 

These minds exist 'after the image of God.' They 
are spirit set amid the conditions of finitude. They 
are countless in point of space and in ceaseless develop- 
ment in point of time. The present which belongs to 
them and to which they belong, is an analogue of 
eternity, for eternity, which we do not know from 
experience but infer from the self-consciousness of our 
spiritual being, is the present as we have it, yet thought 
without the limitation in which we have it, without the 
change of coming and going and without the dimness 
of future and past. Human existence is Mind under 
the ban of finitude, spiritual and sensuous at once and 
in an inseparable manner, a contrast which is reconciled 
every moment in order to its renewal, renewed in order 



92 APPENDICES. 

to its reconciliation. Our being, so long as it is itself, 
healthy and awake, can at no moment be merely sen- 
suous or merely spiritual. 

Another peculiarity of our spiritual nature is its 
power of self-vision, the ability to look into its own 
depths and to initiate movement within and from itself 
as if its outward connections were not. In thinking, 
believing and observing, the mind fills itself with a 
content that in a certain sense lies beyond the limits of 
finitu.de. Even then, though it now touches the earth 
witli but the tips of its toes, it remains still under the 
ban of fmitude, in the forms of conception which it has 
won and developed therefrom. 

What occurs, now, if the spirit, in the same entirety 
and power, turns to the outer side of its double-formed 
nature? By this expression I do not refer to man's 
practical will and action, but to a phenomenon of his 
intelligence. His theoretical procedure, his investi- 
gation and discovery in practical directions, will be 
conditioned by his sense-life. The sensuous side of 
his existence does not bring to him merely as to a 
motionless and untroubled mirror, diversified impulses 
from the separate objects perceptible by sense ; but, 
with and through this side of his nature, as he stands 
in the midst of the finite objects that surround and 
submerge him, he is conditioned and moved by them 
and driven about with them, so that, in the restless dust- 
whirl of these restlessly changing Unites, he resembles in 
all but a single particular the atoms which accompany 
him in this tumult. But the difference is after all 
infinite, for by virtue of his spiritual essence man has 
the ability to be like a fixed point in this confusion, or 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 93 

at least in his soul to feel, apprehend and know himself 
as such ; the ability by thinking and willing, by con- 
sciousness and self-determination, always to keep mov- 
ing, in no matter how narrow a road ; the ability by 
observing, estimating, and comprehending them, to 
become master of things outside himself. 

That the little and indigent being of man possesses 
and uses this power of lordship, has always been the 
riddle of contemplation. With naive depth of view 
Genesis says that when God had created all kinds of 
beasts of the field and all kinds of birds of the heavens, 
'he brought them unto the man to see what he would 
call them : and whatsoever the man called every living 
creature, that was the name thereof.' 1 Naming was the 
beginning of man's mastery over things. With the 
name a sign, a spiritual counterpart was provided for 
every creature or being. They were then no longer 
merely in the world of outer existence ; they were 
transferred to that of thought, into the mental life of 
the human creature living in the midst of them. Each 
one kept the name given it, even though the form of 
the manifestation corresponding to the name once im- 
posed might by nutrition or exhaustion, or by repetition 
in propagation, representing itself variously in various 
vicissitudes, change never so much. The name was, as 
it were, the permanent defining essence of the perpet- 
ually changing manifestations. It laid hold of that 
which was constant amid the change, and held it fast 
as the essential thing. 

In the objective, or, more correctly, the actual or ex- 
ternal world, groups of phenomena under permanent 
1 Genesis ii: 19. 



04 APPENDICES. 

names are before us in infinite variableness, manifold- 
ness, and differences of kind ; but the mind masters tins 
desolate multifariousness by taking that which is, in a 
way, viz., essentially and mentally, the same, and combin- 
ing it in this sameness. As to their objective or rather 
their external phasis, things are simply numberless indi- 
viduals in numberless combinations and separations and 
in ceaseless change ; but as represented in the human 
mind they stand forth fixed and classified according to 
their similarities, affinities and relations. They are the 
orderly signs and counterparts of the finite things chaoti- 
cally flowing about us, of the confused multitude of 
changing and hovering phenomena. This world of 
names and ideas is to the mind the counterpart of the 
world without. For us it is the truth of that world. 

Thus simplifying, separating and combining, regu- 
lating and subordinating, thus creating in itself a cosmos 
of representations and conceptions over against the 
confused world of finite realities, the human mind 
makes itself by speech and thought theoretically master 
of those finites amid which and the changes of which 
its temporal being stands. Every human being goes 
through this anew ; every one is a new beginning, a 
fresh ego-creation. 

Each becomes this by learning to feel and apprehend 
himself as a totality within himself, by seeing, thinking, 
and, so far as in him is, shaping everything that is re- 
lated to him and to which he is related, however narrow 
or wide this realm may be, as a closed circle about him- 
self as its middle point. He can do this by that gift of 
combining particulars according to their nature, that 
restlessly working gift of simplifying and generalizing, 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 95 

of separation and combination, by virtue of which he is 
continually embracing wider stretches, taking them up 
into his representation and, as it were, building them 
into his mind. The rose, one word for countless par- 
ticular attributes, he distinguishes from the pink, but, 
fixing upon what is similar in the two, he calls both 
flowers. He makes plants of them both, as he does of 
the bushes and the grasses. Plants he sees to be quite 
different from animals, yet plants and animals arise, 
grow, and die in a similar manner. This life of theirs 
distinguishes for him the organic world in contrast with 
stone, sea, flame, and so on. He thus develops and 
applies more and more comprehensive forms, more and 
more general ideas. 

The last and most universal of these classifications 
among things perceptible by the senses, are Nature and 
History. They comprehend the world of phenomena 
under the two most inclusive representations ever ap- 
applied, representations which have, perhaps wrongly, 
been complimented by the title of intuitions a priori 
We are certain to embrace the totality of phenomena if 
we think of them as arranged for us in space and time, 
or in other words if we say Nature and History. 

Obviously, whatever is in space is also in time, and 
vice versa. The things of the empirical world exist 
neither spatially nor temporally ; but we apprehend them 
so according as the one or the other element appears 
to us to preponderate, or according as we see occasion 
to exalt the one or the other as the more weighty or 
essential characteristic. 

Of course not much is said when we have thus defined 
the word ' history ' and its conception, unless we are in 



96 APPENDICES. 

condition to search the notion more deeply. Space and 
time are the widest, that is the most empty representa- 
tions of our mind. They obtain a content only in the 
measure in which we determine them lengthwise and 
crosswise, as to both succession and propinquity. This 
means distinguishing the particulars within them : not 
merely saying that they are, but what they are. 

That these phenomena which we summarily embrace 
as History and Nature, in themselves possess other de- 
terminations and predicates than just being or being 
distinguished in time and space, we know by the fact 
that we ourselves, as to our sensuous existence, stand in 
the midst of them, are determined by them and are re- 
lated in one way and another to them. That is, we have 
empirical knowledge. Without this, space and time 
would be to us an empty .r, and the world of phenomena 
would remain to us a chaos. Only as we, while stand- 
ing in the midst of them, separate them from ourselves, 
relate ourselves to them with the different sides and 
susceptibilities of our sensuous existence affected by 
now these now those exponents, and according to these 
exponents distinguish and compare them with each 
other; only thus, in our ego, through our cognition, in 
our knowledge, does what exists in space and time re- 
ceive wider denominations and determinations. Only 
thus do the empty generalities of space and time, the 
empty catch-alls of Nature and History develop them- 
selves for us into a discrete content, into definite series 
of ideas, into particular beings existing in synthesis and 
succession. 

Space and time are related like repose and. restless- 
ness, indolence and haste, bondage and freedom. They 



XATl'KE AND HISTORY. 97 

are contrasted yet always bound together, inseparable 
yet always wrestling with each other. For everything 
is in motion. The consciousness of our life, of our 
mental and sensuous existence, which, though polarized 
thus in itself, is neither purely sensuous nor purely 
mental nor shifting between the two, but is the living 
unity of the two sides, gives us the idea of movement 
and of its elements, space and time. If it were destitute 
of motion the world of phenomena would be incompre- 
hensible to us. Were we without motion in ourselves 
we should not be in condition to grasp that world. By 
being in motion, as ourselves are within, the world 
without us permits us to understand it under the anal- 
ogy of that which is going on in ourselves. 

While space and time are ever united in motion, 
time strives as it were to overcome indolent space in 
ever new motion, and motion is all the time trying to 
sink back again out of the impatience of time into the 
repose of being, broadening its area by lowering its rate. 
How comes it then that human observation construes 
certain series of phenomena in the restless movement 
of things more according to their temporal side, and 
others more according to their spatial, taking the one 
set as Nature, the other as History ? 

We certainly see constant motion and constant change 
all about us ; but we separate off certain phenomena in 
which the temporal element recedes, in which it appears 
only transitorily, as it were, in order to sink back into 
itself : phenomena which in essence repeat themselves, 
in which the endless succession of time is broken up 
into recurring cycles or periods of equal length. A 
formation results which is fc characterized by unity, not 



98 APPENDICES. 

numerically but in nature or kind.' In such phe- 
nomena the mind lays hold of the constant, that which 
abides in the midst of change, that to which motion 
relates : the rule, the law, the substance, that which 
fills space, etc. For it is the forms that repeat them- 
selves here, and the immaterial character of their peri- 
odical return lowers the temporal element in their 
motion to a secondary place, not indeed in relation to 
their being but as regards our apprehension and under- 
standing. This is the way in which we win for the 
general notion of space its discrete content, and it is 
this content which is embraced by us in the designation 
1 Nature." 

In other phenomena our mind emphasizes the change 
in that which abides the same. It notices that here 
motion results in ever new forms, formations so new 
and so determinative that the material substrate on 
which they appear seems like a secondary element, 
while every new form is individually different from the 
others, so different indeed that each, as it assumes its 
place after its predecessor, is conditioned by it, grows 
out of it, ideally takes it up into itself, yet when grown 
out of it contains and maintains it ideally in itself. It 
is a continuity, in which everything that precedes trans- 
plants itself into what is later, rilling it out and extending 
it as ' a contribution to itself ;' * while the latter pre- 
sents itself as a result, fulfilment, and enlargement of 
the earlier. It is not the continuity of a circle that 
returns into itself, of a period repeating itself, but that 
of an endless succession, and this in such wise that in 
every new a further new has its germ and the assurance 
1 iirlSocris els avr6. See page 10. 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 99 

of working itself out. For in every new the entire 
series of past forms is ideally summed up, and every 
one of them appears as element and temporary ex- 
pression in the growing sum. In this restless succession, 
in this continuity advancing upon itself, the general 
notion of time wins its discrete content, which we 
designate by the expression ' History.' 

Even those phenomena which we gather under the 
expression ' Nature ' exist in individual forms, separate 
from each other, that is if we apprehend them also as 
homogeneous and similar. Out of every wheat-kernel, 
if it is not withdrawn from its periodic life by a different 
application, as germination, stalk-growth, flower, ripen- 
ing of the fruit, there grows an individually different 
stalk, a new generation of kernels. The oaks in the 
same wood, though sprung each like its neighbor out of 
the acorns perhaps of the same maternal oak, are indi- 
vidually different not only in space but also in age, size, 
ramification, grouping of the masses of foliage, etc. 
We indeed perceive the differences, but they appear to 
us as not essential. Scientifically as practically, their 
individuality is immaterial to us. Among existences 
of this kind our mind has no special category for indi- 
viduals. For this kind of individuals we have no other 
name than that of their species. We of course notice 
that they change, but in the simply periodical return of 
their changes they have for us no history. We indeed 
distinguish the individuals, but their differences show us 
no succession of formations advancing one upon another. 
We apprehend them according to space, material, the 
permanent in change, the indifference of self-repeating 
variety ; for only in these relations has our mind catego- 



100 APPENDICES. 

lies for them, and only according' to these categories can 
we grasp and understand them, or relate ourselves to 
them practically or theoretically. And according to these 
our modes of apprehension we use and consume them, 
taking them for that which they are to us. We sow 
these wheat-kernels and care for these oaks, in order in 
their time to kill them and consume them as what they 
are to us, combustible material or farinaceous fruit. 
We rear these animals, in order daily to rob them of 
the milk provided for their young, and finally to slay 
them. And so on. We unweariedly observe and in- 
vestigate in order to know Nature according to its 
materials, forces and laws, that we may apply it to our 
ends according to the categories under which we appre- 
hend and comprehend it. It is for us nothing hut 
material. In its individual manifestations we find it 
sealed, incomprehensible, indifferent. 

And when, in grafting fruit trees, rearing animals, 
and crossing breeds, in order to produce nobler results, 
we play as it were the part of Providence, it is our cun- 
ning and calculation, not any understanding on the part 
of those creatures, that brings us such results. When 
we analyze or compound bodies chemically, or treat 
them physically so or so to isolate certain of their func- 
tions in order to observe these or to make them produce 
effects, we do not seek or find what is individually 
characteristic of this stone, this flame, this vibrating 
chord, but what is characteristic of genus or species. 
And when we appropriate and apply, aesthetically, for 
instance, the temporary forms which the animal or the 
plant world or the landscape offers us, we well know 
that it is not the individuality of this piece of the 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 101 

earth's surface, of this tree or animal, which we wish 
understood and represented thereby ; but that we put 
something into them which is not in them, something 
quite remote from them, in fact, so that these items of 
nature serve us only as expressions of our feeling or 
thought, we, so to speak, anthropomorphising them ; as 
in Dante's Purgatory the loathsome picture of lust be- 
comes under the passionate glance of the man surveying 
it in desire, a woman blooming in beauty. 

Also in the moral world, in the realm of those reali- 
ties which we call History, there are elements which 
can be measured, weighed and calculated. But these 
material conditions by no means exhaust the life of the 
moral world, or suffice to explain it ; and whoever 
thinks that he can explain it in this manner overlooks 
or denies that which is here essential. The sexual im- 
pulse does not exhaust or explain the moral might of 
marriage. Common remembrance of common experi- 
ences, possession of common hopes and cares, losses and 
successes, renew again even for couples who are growing- 
old, the warmth of their first bliss. For them their mar- 
riage has a history. In this history its moral might was 
founded for them, and it is justified and fulfilled in and 
by the same. 

In the moral universe there is certainly nothing 
which may not be subject directly or indirectly to mate- 
rial conditions, though the material conditions are not 
the only ones operative or determinative in this realm. 
The nobility of our moral being consists in the fact that 
it does not in any way deny or falsely estimate its envi- 
ronment, but rather in fact illuminates and spiritualizes 
this. It is thus that the contact of minds in their work 



102 APPENDICES. 

upon and with one another, in their restless impulse to 
shape things and to understand and be understood, de- 
velops this marvellous stratum of spiritual being which 
en swathes our globe, forever touching the natural world 
and yet free from it. Its elements are representations, 
thoughts, passions, mistakes, guilt and the like. 

It does not imply too light an estimate of the moral 
world to lay it down that this restlessly flowing and 
swelling stratum of spiritual existence is the habitat and 
ground of its formations, the plastic mass, so to speak, 
where they originate. Such formations are certainly 
none the less realities, or of less power objectively, 
because they essentially live only in the souls, hearts, 
knowledge, and consciences of human beings, and em- 
ploy the body and things of a bodily kind merely as 
their expressions, bearing their impress. True, they 
can be perceived, understood, and investigated only in 
these expressions and impressions ; but they do not 
exist merely that the historical method may be applied 
to them. They can be scientifically surveyed from still 
other points of view than the historical. They are 
open to this, for what they are they have become, and 
to make out the development of tilings from their de- 
veloped forms, and their developed forms from their 
development is the nature of the historical method. 

We offer, in conclusion, one more remark to parry 
objections. No one thinks of contesting the application 
to physics of the name of science, or of doubting the 
scientific results of physical research, although the 
science is not nature, but only a manner of observing 
nature. No one objects to mathematics on the ground 
that its whole proud structure stands only within the 



* 



NATURE AND HISTORY. 103 

knowing mind. Our shrewd mother tongue forms from 
the participle of the word 'to know' (wisseni) its 
descriptive for that which is certain (jgewiss). It does 
not name the outer and so-called objective being of 
things ' certain,' but beings and occurrences considered 
as 'known.' Not what addresses us as sensuously 
perceptible is ' true,' according to our language. No 
material thing presents itself to us as 'true,' but we 
' take it true ' : and make it certain by means of our 
knowledge. 

'Our perception,' 'our knowledge' : here would lurk 
the most dubious subjectivism, were the human world 
composed of atoms, each filling its span of space and 
time, and without any connection from beginning to end ; 
or of atomic men as exemplified by the old philosopher's 
plucked cock, and by the view of man which modern 
radicalism takes as the starting point of its human 
rights, and modern materialism and nihilism for the 
basis of their 'sociology.' The individual as such 
could not even bejborn, to say nothing of being cared 
for, brought up, and developed into a human adult. 
From the moment of his birth, and even of his con- 
ception, he has place in the moral partnerships, this 
family, this nation, State, faith or unfaith, etc., and it 
is from and through them that he originally receives 
whatever he is and has, whether of bodily or of spiritual 
fortune. 

It is clear that the scepticism of these views does not 
go to controvert the reality of the natural world, still 

1 Wahmehmen, literally 'to take as true' (wahr, 'true. 1 and 
nehmen, 'take,') is in German psychology the technical word denot- 
ing ' to perceive. * — 7 V. 



104 APPENDICES. 

less the actuality of the historical or moral formations. 
To us nature is not a '•phantom of the brain.' Even 
less is the moral world the threadbare ' affirmation of 
the will to live.' Practically we live and act in the 
confident self-feeling of our ego-hood, and also in the 
direct apprehension of the outer totality in the midst 
of which we stand. These are the two elements which 
result from the character of our being, spiritual and 
sensuous at once. 

On this immediate certainty with which we cognize 
ourselves and the world, on this belief, however high or 
low the expression we have arrived at for its ultimate 
ground or its highest end, is based our human existence 
and activity. This immediate reality we possess, and 
we q:o on to search for and work out the truth beneath 
it, which grows and deepens as we search and work. 
In the poverty of our ego-hood and ego-development — 
and this is present and irrepressible with our first spoken 
word — lies the pressure upon us to bring to our 
consciousness what is perceived and ^believed, to com- 
prehend it, to free it as it were from the umbilical cord 
which attaches it to the immediate realities, and arrange 
it in order among the categories of our thinking. 
These categories are related to the totality of the actual 
things which we immediately perceive, including our 
ego-hood, as the polygon is to the circle. Never so 
many-sided and similar to a circle, the polygon remains 
angular and bounded by straight lines, circle and poly- 
gon never ceasing to be mutally incommensurable. 

It is the mistaken pride of the human mind to bolster 
the circles of what it directly apprehends upon its own 
angular constructions as their norm or confirmation, 



ART AND METHOD. 105 

while in fact these constructions are only effort upon 
effort gradually to trace a line outside those circles. 
We deny the spherical lines of faith because our thought 
can not exhaust them with its right-lined figures, any 
more than that boy of Augustine's, eagerly as he might 
bail with his shell, could dry the hole which lie had dug 
on the shore, when the sea was always ready to pour 
over into it. 

III. — ART AND METHOD. 

Poetry was composed before poetics arose, as people 
talked before there were grammar and rhetoric. Prac- 
tical needs had taught men to mix and analyze materials 
and to apply the powers of nature to human purposes, 
before chemistry and physics had methodically investi- 
gated nature and expressed its law r s in scientific form. 

Recollections also belong to humanity's deepest 
nature and needs. However narrow or wide the circles 
which they may embrace, they are never in any wise 
wanting to men. In the highest degree personal as 
they at first appear, they yet form a bond between the 
souls which meet in them. No human community is 
without them. Each possesses in its previous life and 
history the image of its being, a common possession of 
all participants, which makes their relationship so much 
the firmer and more intimate. 

We can believe that the memories of highly gifted 
peoples are embellished in their sagas, and become types 
for the expression of the ideals to which the spirit of 
the people is directed. We can suppose also that their 
faith gets for them its basis in the form of sacred stories, 



106 APPENDICES. 

which present the contents of it to the eye as actual 
occurrences, and that such myths grow along with the 
sagas. But when this restlessly living fusion, finally 
satiated, comes to an end in the form of great epics, 
myths will no longer belong to the na'ive faith alone. 

The earliest history, that of the Greeks, began with 
the collection and sifting of such myths and sagas. 
Theirs were the earliest efforts to bring into this pri- 
meval forest of traditions order, connection, agreement, 
a chronological system, the first attempts at real investi- 
gation. From the Greeks dates the continuity of the 
sciences. Almost all of these which busy men's minds 
to-day had their beginnings in Greece. Particularly 
the field which has been well designated as that of the 
moral sciences was tilled by them with predilection. 
But they have no treatise on the Principles of History, 
no 'histories,' to accompany their ethics, politics, eco- 
nomics, etc. 

After geniuses had historically described the age of 
Marathon and the age of Pericles, Thucydides being 
the last member of the galaxy, it was left to Isokrates 
and not to Aristotle to found an historical school. This 
fact drew history into paths from which Polybius vainly 
exerted himself to bring it back. It became, and with 
the Romans it remained, so far as philology did not get 
possession of it, a part of rhetoric or belles lettres. 
Between the two, philology and rhetoric, historical 
sketches for practical purposes, including encyclopedias 
and school books, gradually sank to the most miserable 
dryness. 

We come to the middle age. Its historical work is 
even less likely to betray any new impulses toward 



ART AND METHOD. 107 

scientific thought than is that of declining antiquity, 
unless we except the sense for theological construction 
which the middle age here and there exhibits. This 
judgment is true, in spite of the fact that an occasional 
historian in the times of the Carolingians and the Ottos 
sought his model of style among the ancients and 
tricked out his heroes with their rhetorical flourishes. 

As the middle age drew to a close, the renewed strife 
against the papacy and the hierarchy seized upon his- 
torical investigation as a weapon, and the researches in 
regard to the alleged donation of Constantine were fol- 
lowed stroke after stroke by historico-critical attacks 
upon the false traditions, the anti-scriptural institutions, 
and the canonical assumptions of the Church. Even 
then, however, in these important scientific onsets, rhet- 
oric again and speedily got the upper hand of history. 
This occurred first in Germany. The last magnificent 
attempt on the German side, that of Sebastian Franck, 
scientifically to collate the knowledge and practice which 
had been won, was drowned by the din of the brawl, so 
soon grown dogmatic, between the creeds. 

Only after the natural sciences, sure and conscious of 
their way, had established their method and thereby 
made a new beginning in scientific thought, did the 
notion emerge of finding a methodical side even for the 
' methodless matter ' 1 of History. To the time of Gal- 
ileo and Bacon belongs Jean Bodin ; to that of Huygens 
and Newton, Pufendorff and also Leibnitz, the thinker, 
who broke paths in all directions at once. Then the 
English Illumination, if it is permitted thus to name the 
period of the so-called deists, took up this question. To 

1 dfif '6080$ v\r^. See page 62. 



108 APPENDICES. 

its representations was due the first effort to divide our 
science according to its problems or departments. They 
spoke of the History of the World, the History of Hu- 
manity, Universal History, the History of States, of peo- 
ples, and so on. Voltaire, the pupil and continuator of 
this English tendency, contributed to it the unclear de- 
signation ' philosophie de V MstoireJ The Gottingen his- 
torical school developed a kind of system among the 
newly created sciences and associate sciences in their 
field, and began to infuse its spirit even into branches 
but remotely connected with History. More than one of 
the great poets and thinkers of our nation went deep into 
the theoretical question of historical certitude ; and 
there developed in historical labor and investigation 
itself a habit of sharp and certain criticism, which pro- 
duced entirely new and surprising results in every 
realm of History where it was applied. In this historical 
criticism the German nation has ever since Niebuhr out- 
stripped all others ; and the style or technique of inves- 
tigation maintained in the splendid labors of German 
savans seemed to need only expression in general and 
theoretical propositions in order to constitute the his- 
torical method. 

To be sure, the great public was not at once served 
by this application of our historical toil. It wished to 
read, not to study, and complained that we set before 
it the process of preparing food instead of the food 
itself. It called the German method in history pedantic, 
exclusive, unenjoyable. How much more agreeable to 
read were Macaulay's Essays than these learned and 
tiresome investigations ! How the accounts of the 
French Revolution in Thiers's splendid delineation 



ART AND METHOD. 109 

took ! In this way it came to pass that not only Ger- 
man historical taste but German historical judgment, 
and consequently in no slight degree also German 
political judgment, being all formed and guided for 
three or four centuries by the foreign style of making 
History, were dominated by the rhetorical superiority of 
other nations. 

This is not all. While such rhetorical art takes 
weighty and tremendous events, with the difficult en- 
tanglements in which they are usually wrought out or 
at least prepared for, and sadly metamorphoses them, as 
it depicts the horror of men's unchained passions and 
fanatic persecutions, the false representation, though 
discordant enough artistically, yet has a thrilling and 
dramatic effect when read. Composition is certain to 
be so much the more comprehensible and persuasive for 
being of that kind. It is able to make even the less 
intelligent reader acquainted with things which in their 
actual course demanded from the contemporary who 
wished to understand them in never so moderate a 
degree, a thousand points of previous knowledge, be- 
sides much experience and a calm and collected judg- 
ment. Historical art knows how in the most felicitous 
manner to avoid all this, so that the attentive reader, 
when he has perused his Thiers or Macaulay to the 
end, is permitted to believe himself the richer by the 
great experiences of the revolutions, party-wars, and 
constitutional developments of which they treat. k Ex- 
periences,' forsooth ! when they lack the best of what 
makes experiences fruitful, the earnestness of actual 
men hard at work, responsibility for irrevocable de- 
cisions, the sacrifice which even victory demands, the 



110 APPENDICES. 

failure which treads under foot the most righteous 
cause ! The art of the historian lifts the reader above 
thought of any such side issues. It fills his fancy 
with representations and views which embrace but the 
splendidly illuminated tips of the broad, hard, tediously 
slow reality. It persuades him that these sum up all 
the particular events and constitute the truth of the 
realities not dwelt upon. It helps in its way the limit- 
less influence of public opinion, leading people to 
measure the reality according to their ideas and to call 
upon reality to form or transform itself accordingly. 
Readers demand this the more impatiently the easier 
custom has made it for them to think of such a reversal 
of things. We Germans too already boast an historical 
literature answering the popular need. Among us as 
elsewhere the insight is attained or the confession made 
that ' History is at once art and science.' At the same 
time the question of method, which is what we are 
concerned with here, is falling into obscurity anew. 

What then, in works of an historical kind, is the 
mutual relation between art and science ? For instance, 
is the fact that History is marked by ' criticism and 
learning' enough to give it a scientific character? Is 
that incumbent on art which the historian ought in any 
event to do? Should the historian's studies actually 
have no other aim than that he may write a few books ? 
Should they have no application but to entertain by 
instructing and to instruct by entertaining ? 

History is the only science enjoying the ambiguous 
fortune of being required to be at the same time an 
art. a fortune which, in spite of Platonic dialogues, 
not even philosophy shares with it. It would not be 



ART AND METHOD. Ill 

without interest to inquire the reason for this peculiarity 
of History. 

We, however, pass to another side of the question. 
In artistic Labors, according to an old manner of expres- 
sion, technique and Muses' work go hand in hand. It 
belongs to the nature of art that its productions make 
you forget the defects which inhere in its means of ex- 
pression. Art can do this in proportion as the idea 
which it wishes to bring out in given forms, upon such 
and such materials, and with this technique, vivifies and 
illumines all these. What is created in such a manner 
is a totality, a world in itself. Muses' work has the 
power to make the observer or hearer fully and exclu- 
sively receive and feel in a given expression what that 
work was meant to express. 

It is different with the sciences. Particularly the 
empirical ones have no more imperative duty than to 
make clear the gaps which are based in the objects of 
their search; to control the errors which arise out of 
their technique ; to inquire the scope of their methods, 
recognizing that they can give right results only within 
the limits essentially pertaining to them. 

Perhaps the greatest service of the critical school in 
History, at least the one most important in respect to 
method, is to have given rise to the insight that the 
groundwork of our studies is the examination of the 
' sources ' from which we draw. In this way the re- 
lation of History to past events is placed at the point 
which yields a scientific rule. This critical view that 
past events lie before us no longer directly, but only in 
a mediate manner, that we can not restore them ' ob- 
jectively,' but can only frame out of the 'sources' a 



112 APPENDICES. 

more or less subjective apprehension, view, or copy of 
them, that the apprehensions and views thus attainable 
and won are all that it is possible for us to know of the 
past, that thus ' History ' exists not outwardly and as 
a reality, but only as thus mediated, studied out, and 
known, — this, so it seems, must be our point of de- 
parture if we will cease to ' naturalize ' in history. 

What is before us for investigation is not past events 
as such, but partly remnants of them, partly ideas of 
them. The remnants are such only for historical con- 
sideration. They stand as wholes and on their own 
account in the midst of this present, many of them, 
fragmentary and widowed as they are, instantly remind- 
ing us that they were once different, more alive and 
important than now ; others transformed and still in 
living and practical application ; others changed almost 
beyond recognition and fused in the being and life of 
the present. The present itself is nothing else but the 
sum of all the remnants and products of the past. 
Furthermore, views of what was and happened are not 
always from contemporaries, those acquainted with the 
facts, or impartial witnesses, but often views of views, 
at third or fourth hand. And even when contemporaries 
tell what happened in their time, how much did they 
personally see and hear of what they relate ? One's 
own eye-sight and hearing embrace after all but a part, 
a side, a tendency of the occurrences. And so on. 

In point of method the character of these two kinds 
of materials is so extraordinarily different that one does 
well to keep them separate even in technical nomencla- 
ture ; and it behooves such as wish their writings to be 
sources to name their sources even when in most respects 



ART AND METHOD. 113 

they are like the other remnants, being literary remains 
of the time in which they arose. 

The now usual method or technique of historical in- 
vestigation was developed from the study of times which 
have transmitted, at least for political history, nothing 
or little but the sort of views above characterized, from 
more or less contemporary narrators. Much for which 
we should like to seek and inquire, these accounts do 
not touch at all. To the question how our emperors 
when they crossed the Alps on their journeys to Rome 
cared for thousands of men and horses, to the question 
in what form the commerce of the Mediterranean was 
carried on after the revolution which Alexander the 
Great effected over all Asia, the sources give us no 
information. 

How superficial, how unreliable our knowledge of 
earlier times is, how necessarily fragmentary and limited 
to particular points the view which Ave can now gather 
therefrom, we become conscious even when we study 
times from which the archives offer us something 
more than the k original documents ' of closed public 
law cases ; giving us diplomatic reports, reports of 
administrative authorities and state papers of all 
kinds. And further, how vividly prominent in such 
study is the difference between the ' views ' of the 
foreign ambassadors or of the domestic authorities, 
and the remains that survive of the actual course of 
diplomacy, the deliberations back and forth, the proto- 
cols of the negotiations, and so on. Certainly these 
state documents do not as a rule, like those narrations, 
lay before us an already formed idea of the case, a 
preliminary historical picture of what had just happened. 



1 1 4 APPENDICES. 

They are remnants of that which happened ; they are 
pieces of the transaction and of the course it pursued, 
which still lie directly before our eyes. And if I 
may give the expression so wide an application, it is as 
a 'transaction,' in the broad maze of the present, con- 
ditioned and conditioning in a thousand ways, that those 
events come to pass which we afterwards apprehend 
successively as History. We thus look at them in a 
quite different way from that in which they occurred, 
and which they had in the wishes and deeds of those 
who enacted them. So it is not a paradox to ask 
how History (^Greschichte) comes out of transactions 
(Greschciften), and what it is which with this transfer 
into another medium, as it were, is added or lost. 

I may be permitted to offer a single remark in con- 
clusion. I have in another place sought to refute the 
contention made against our science by those who view 
the method of natural science as the only scientific one, 
and who think that History must be raised to the rank of 
a science through the application of that method. Just 
as if in the realm of the historical, that is, of the moral 
life, only analogy were worthy of regard and not also 
anomaly, the individual, free-will, responsibility, genius. 
As if it were not a scientific task to seek ways of in- 
vestigation, of verification, of understanding for the 
movements and effects of human freedom and of per- 
sonal peculiarities, however high or low the estimate 
which may be placed upon them. 

We certainly possess immediately and in subjec- 
tive certainty, an understanding of human things, of 
every expression and impression of man's creation 
or behavior which is perceptible to us, so far as it 



ART AND METHOD. 115 

is perceptible. What we have to do is to find 
methods, in order to secure objective' rules and control 
for this immediate and subjective grasp of events, 
especially as we now have before us, to represent the 
past, only the views of others or fragments of that which 
once existed. We need to ground, sound and justify 
our subjective knowledge. Only this seems able to 
assert itself as the sense of the historical objectivity so 
often named. 

We are to discover methods. There is need of differ- 
ent ones for different problems, and often a combination 
of several is required for the solution of one problem. 
So long as History was believed to be essentially politi- 
cal history, and the task of the historian was just to 
recount in new presentation and connection what had 
been transmitted about revolutions, wars, state events, 
etc., it might suffice to take for use from the best 
sources, which had perhaps been critically authenticated 
as the best, the material to be wrought into a book, 
a lecture, or the like. But since the insight has been 
awakened that also the arts, jural formations, every- 
thing of human creation, all the formations character- 
izing the moral world, can and must be investigated in 
order to deduce that which is from that which was, 
demands of a very different kind are made upon our 
science. It has to investigate formations according to 
their historical connection, formations of which perhaps 
only individual remnants are preserved, to open fields 
hitherto not considered or treated as historical, least of 
all by those who lived in the midst of them. Thus 
questions are pressing upon History from all sides, 
questions touching things for the most part incompa- 



116 APPENDICES. 

rably weightier than the often very superficial and 
accidental accounts which have hitherto passed for 
History. Is investigation to lay down its arms here? 

When we enter a collection of Egyptian antiquities, 
we have at once the subjective view of their wonderful 
ancientness, and the accompanying strange impression ; 
but at least in certain directions we can by investigation 
come to more positive results. Here are these syenites, 
hewn and polished. Here are these colors, these woven 
fabrics. What tools, what metals were required to work 
such hard stone? What mechanical contrivances were 
needed to raise such masses out of the quarry and put 
them aboard ship? How were these colors prepared 
chemically? Out of what materials are these fabrics 
made and whence did they come ? In the way of such 
technological interpretation of remains, facts are made 
out which in numerous and important directions fill up 
our meagre tradition concerning ancient Egypt ; and 
these facts possess a certainty so much the greater for 
the indirectness of the manner in which they were 
deduced. 

Many think it the part of criticism, touching, for in- 
stance, the constitution of ancient Rome or Athens 
before the Persian wars, to allow only that to pass as 
good history which is explicitly transmitted and attested. 
The reader's fancy will not fail to combine these scanty 
notices and thus to fill them out into a picture ; only, 
this filling out is commonly a play of the fancy, and the 
picture more or less artificial. Is it not possible to find 
methods which will regulate the process of such filling 
out, and give it a foundation ? In the pragmatic nature 
exhibited by things of this kind — and writers should 



ART AND METHOD. 117 

leave off misapprehending Polybius's expression 'prag- 
matic ' — lie elements, conditions, necessities, traces of 
which, provided we look more sharply, may perhaps be 
re-recognized in what still lies before us. The hypo- 
thetical line which enabled us to trace that pragmatic 
nature of things then confirms itself, since this or that 
fragment exactly fits into it. 

When it was necessary to work out the history of 
art during the times of Raphael and Diirer, not much 
advance could be made with the ' sources ' and the criti- 
cism of sources, although in Vasari and others, at least 
for the Italian masters, was found just the external 
information that was desired. In their works and those 
of their German contemporaries, however, was found 
something entirely different, exactly the material for 
investigation, though confessedly of a nature which 
required in the investigator who was to derive exact 
results from it, an outfit of an especial kind. He was 
obliged to know the technique of painting, in order to 
distinguish that of the different artists, the tint of each 
one's tone, his chiaroscuro, his brush-stroke. He was 
obliged to be sure how Albrecht Diirer's eye envisaged 
the human form, else he could not show whether a 
given crucifix was from his hand. In order finally to 
decide whether this or that important portrait head was 
by Leonardo da Vinci or Holbein, he had to bring to 
his work, so to speak, a learned apparatus of etchings, 
hand sketches, etc. He must be familiar with the 
mode of looking at things in that age, the range of its 
general knowledge, its common convictions, ecclesi- 
astical and profane, its local and daily history, that he 
might be able rightly to interpret what was presented 



118 APPENDICES. 

in the works of art or in things related thereto. He 
was called upon not only aesthetically to feel but per- 
suasively to point out the artist's deeper or more super- 
ficial view or intention. 

The same in all other departments. Only the deep 
and many sided technical and special knowledge, ac- 
cording as it is art, law, commerce, agriculture, or the 
State and politics that is to be historically investigated, 
will put the investigator in condition to ascertain the 
methods demanded for the given case, and to work 
with them. Just so new methods are continually 
found out in the natural sciences to unlock dumb 
nature's mysteries. 

All such methods which come into play in the realm 
of historical studies move within the same periphery 
and have the same determining centre. To unite them 
in their common thought, to develop their system and 
their theory, and so to establish, not the laws of objec- 
tive History but the laws of historical investigation and 
knowledge, — this is the task of HistoriJc. 



INDEX. 



A. 

iEschylus, Droysen's Translation 
of, xv; quoted 12, 313. 

Alexander the Great, Droysen's 
History of, xvii. 

Appendices, 01 and fol.; charac- 
ter of, ix, x. 

Arndt, E. M., in Frankfort As- 
sembly of 1848, xxix. 

Aristophanes, Droysen's Transla- 
tion of, xvi; quoted 80. 

Aristotle, Droysen a connoisseur 
of, xxxii; quoted 10, 36, 83. 

Art and Method, 105 and fol. 

Arts, the, and the Beautiful, 40. 

Authority, the Sphere of, 42. 

B. 

Bacon, F., quoted 80. 

Baur, F. C, 23. 

Beautiful, the, and the Arts, 40. 

Biographical Exposition, 5:'.. 

Biography, Droysen's, Sketch of, 
xiv and fol. 

Bodin, Jean, 16, 107. 

Buckle, H. T., History of Civili- 
zation reviewed, 61 and fol. 

C. 

Catastrophic Exposition, 53. 
Comte, A., 16, 70. 
Criticism, in History, 21 and fol. ; 
— of genuineness, 22; — of 



earlier and later forms, 23; 

— of correctness or validity, 
23; — of the sources, 24; 

— outcome of, what, 25, 26. 

D. 

Dahlman, in Frankfort Assembly 
of 1848, xxix. 

Dante, quoted 15, 45. 

Da Vinci, 117. 

Diacritical procedure, 23. 

Dicsearchus, quoted 38. 

Didactic Exposition, 53 and fol. 

Diplomatics, 22. 

Discussive Exposition, 55 and fol. 

Droysen, G. , son of J. G. , vi. 

Droysen, J. G., rank as historian, 
v, vii, xiv and fol. ; biographies, 
vi; pupils, vi; style, v; his pref- 
ace to the "Outline," ix; do. 
to 3rd Ed., xi; education, xiv; 
early teaching and works, xv, 
xvi; transition to history, xvi; 
History of Hellenism, xvii; its 
faults, xvii; transition to mod. 
hist., xviii; removal to Jena, 
xix; faith in a German Empire, 
xix; History of Prussian Policy, 
xix and fol. ; Droysen as a 
teacher, xxi and fol.; his per- 
sonality, xxiii; his Christianity, 
xxiv; manliness, xxvii; political 
activity, xxviii and fol. ; briefer 
works, xxxii; relations with 

119 



120 



INDIA. 



Eanke, xxxiii ; illness and 

death, xxxiv. 
Duncker, Max, biog. sketches of 

Droysen, vi. 
Diirer, Albrecht, 117. 

E. 

Elevation, the, of History to rank 
of a Science, 01 and fol. 

Encyclopedia and Methodology 
of History, Droysen's lectures 
on, ix, xxiv, 8. 

Ends in History, 46 and fol. 

End, the highest, 47 and fol. 

Eroica, the, of Beethoven, 79. 

Exposition, interrogative, 51, 52; 
— recitative, 52, 53; — didactic, 
53, 54; — discussive, 55 and fol. 

F. 

Family, the, 38. 
Franck, Sebastian, 107. 
Frankfort, National Assembly at, 

in 1848, xxix. 
Frederic the Great, quoted 54. 
Freedom, meaning of, 44, 45. 
Forms, the, in which History 

works, 36 and fol. 

G. 

Gellius, Aulus, quoted 50. 

Genesis, quoted 93. 

Gervinus, 16, 50. 

Gottingen, historical School of 

in 18th Century, 4. 
yvusdi txavrbv, 44. 
Gray Cloister, Gymnasium of, 

Droysen teaches at, xiv, xxi. 
Green, Arnold, Esq., learned 

Hellenist, 38. 
Grunhagen, Prof., of Breslau. vii. 



Hegel, 46. 

Hegelianism, Droysen's, xvii, 
xx. 

Hellenism, Droysen's History of, 
xvii. 

Herder, 54. 

Herodotus, quoted 50. 

Historical Method, the, 12 and 
fol. 

Historical Studies, present condi- 
tion and views of, 3, 61 and fol. 

Historical Writing, present ten- 
dency of, viii; ancient and 
mediaeval, 106 and fol. 

Historik, the, or Outline of the 
Principles of History. Charac- 
ter of, vii, 16, 17. 

History, various views of its na- 
ture, 3 and fol. ; nature, 9, 90 
and fol. ; involves idea of time, 
10; correlative of 'moral 
world,' 10; relation of past and 
present in, 11; deals only with 
what is human, 12. 

Holbein, 117. 

Holstein, and Schleswig, xxviii. 

Humboldt, Win. von, importance 
of for History, 7 and fol., 16. 

I. 

Ideal partnerships, the, of Society, 
39 and fol. 

Illumination, the English, 107. 

Interpretation, in History, 26 and 
fol.; pragmatic, 27; of condi- 
tions, 27; psychological, 28; 
of ideas, 30; its questions, 31 
and fol. 

Interrogation, in History, 21. 

Interrogative Exposition, 51, 52. 



INDEX. 



121 



Invention, in History, 18 and fol. 
Isaacssohn, Prof., vii. 

J. 

John, Gospel of, quoted, xxiv, 49. 
Justice, the Sphere of, 41. 

K. 

Kant, GO, 07. 

"Kiel Address," the, xxviii. 
Kirchoff, A., Greek Alphabet, 21. 
Koser, R., Prof., of Berlin, vii. 
Krliger, Dr. H., Biography of 
Droysen, vi, xiv and fol. 

L. 

Languages, the, and Speech, 39. 
Leibnitz, 107. 
Leo, xvii, 54. 
Leasing, 10, 54, 87. 

M. 
Macaulay, Essays, 108. 
Materials, historical, 18 and fol. 
Matter for the work of History, 

35, 36. 
Maurenbrecher, Prof. , compares 

Droysen with Ranke, xxxiii. 
Method, and Art, 105 and fol.; 

the doctrine of, 17 and fol.; 

the historical, 12. 
Methods, scientific, 15. 
Monographic Exposition, 53. 
Monuments, historical, defined, 

19. 
Midler, Johannes von, 54. 

N. 

Natural partnerships, the, of So- 
ciety, 37 and fol. 
Nature, and History, 90 and fol. 



Neighborhood, the, 38 
Niebuhr, quoted 18. 



Partnerships, the natural, of So- 
ciety, 37 and fol. ; the ideal, 39 
and fol. ; the practical,41 and fol. 
People, the, 39. 
Plato, quoted, 46. 
Polybius, 10, 117; use of the term 

'pragmatic,' 19, 20, 107. 
Practical partnerships, the, 41 

and fol. 
Pragmatic sources, 20; interpre- 
tation, 27; exposition, 55. 
Comp., 19, 20, 107. 
Praying Boy, the, (statue) 81. 
Presentation, systematic, the doc- 
trine of, 49 and fol. 
Principles of History (Historik), 

Outline of, 3 and fol. 
Prize of 1000 Thalers, ree'd by 

Droysen, xxi. 
Problem, the, of this Outline, 10. 
Property, the Sphere of, 41. 
Prussian Policy, Droysen's His- 
tory of, xix. 
Prutz, Hans, mistaken view of 

touching Droysen, xxiv. 
Pufendorff, 107. 

R. 



and Droysen, v, 



Ranke, 54; 

xxxiii. 
Raphael, 78, 117. 
Rechtsstaat, the, 42. 
Recitative Exposition, 52, :>;;. 
Religions, the, and the Sacred, 40. 
Remains, historical, kinds, 18, 19. 
Roeskild, assembly of Estates at 

in 1844, xxviii. 



122 



INDEX. 



Roman Law, of Twelve Tables, 
quoted 43. 



Sacred, the, and Religions, 40. 
Schaeffle, 16. 

Schleicher, quoted 40. 
Schleswig, and Holstein, xxviii. 
Sciences, the, and the True, 40. 
Society, the Sphere of, 41. 
Sources, historical, defined, ID; 

derived, defined, 20. 
Space, correlative to Nature, as 

Time to History, 07. 
Speech and the Languages, 39. 
State, the, 42, 43-, 
Sybel, von, xxxviii, <H. [fol. 

System, the doctrine of, 32 and 



Tables, Twelve, of Roman Law, 

quoted 43. 
Thiers, French Revolution, 108. 
Thucydides, 10, 73. 



Time, a correlative of History, 
08 and fol. 

Translation, the present, charac- 
ter of, vii. 

Translator, Preface of, v. 

Tribe, the, 38. 

True, the, and the Sciences, 40. 

V. 
Voltaire, 108. 

W. 

Wachsmuth, 50. 

Wahrnehmen, significance of its 
etymology, 103. 

Wars for Freedom, Droysen's 
History of, xviii. 

Work, the, of History, 43 and fol. 

Workers, the, of History, 4:'. and 
fol. 

Y. 

York of Wartenburg, Field Mar- 
shal, Droysen's Biography of, 



. 



